The End Is Where We Start From
by Brownbug
Summary: The end of the Universe will be their beginning... "Wherever they were headed, there was something critical waiting for her, she could feel it...she suddenly felt as if she was on The Titanic, heading for the biggest iceberg of all, something with the potential to derail her entire life..." Re-write of 'Utopia', set in my "One Moment in Time" universe. Jack/OC, Eventual Master/OC.
1. Chapter 1

**_Disclaimer: I don't own Dr Who, I leave that privilege to the BBC._  
**

**_Author's Note: _**

**_So this is my re-write of the Season Three episode "Utopia", set in my "One Moment in Time" universe, showing how Tejana meets the Master for the first time since the Time War, prior to being imprisoned on board the Valiant,. The end of the Universe will be their beginning... _**

**_This has been sitting around on my hard drive for a while, collecting dust, so I thought I may as well post it. There's a bit more too, obviously, which I will probably post later. Some time. Maybe.  
_**

**_Summary: "Wherever they were headed, there was something critical waiting for her, she could feel it. She didn't know how and she didn't know why, but she suddenly felt as if she was on __The Titanic_, heading for the biggest iceberg of all, something with the potential to derail her entire life..." Re-write of the episode 'Utopia', set in my "One Moment in Time" universe - Eventual Master/OC (as you would know, if you've read the series).  
**

* * *

**_"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from." - T.S. Eliot_**

**_XXX  
_**

**- Chapter One -**

The control room of the TARDIS was unusually quiet when Martha Jones emerged from the interior door, her dark hair still damp from the shower. The time-rotor was humming contentedly, oscillating smoothly up and down, and the Doctor had his head bent over the console, his black-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose as he fussed over some of the complex dials and levers, occasionally muttering to himself.

Tejana sat nearby in the yellow pilot seat, her legs curled comfortably underneath her. She was deeply absorbed in a paperback book and was paying no attention to her father whatsoever.

Martha walked over to her friend and leaned over to try to catch a glimpse of the title of her book. "What are you reading?"

To her surprise, Tejana held the book out of her reach, refusing to show it to her. "Nothing!"

"Oh, come on," Martha said. "Whatever it is, it's obviously got you hooked. You've even been crying!"

Tejana scowled defensively. "I have not!"

"Oh, you have! Your eyes are all red!" Martha grinned. Tejana was normally so self-controlled, it was a rare joy to have a chance like this to tease her. "Oh, go on, tell me what it is! It is some sort of sappy romance, is that why you won't show me?"

"If you must know," Tejana replied, gathering her scattered dignity around her like a cloak. "It's the seventh Harry Potter book."

Martha stared at her. "The _seventh _book?" she echoed. "But the sixth book has only just come out! The final book won't be published until next year sometime!"

This time it was Tejana's turn to grin mockingly. "Hel-_lo_?" she said in a sing-song voice, gesturing around her. "Time machine, remember?"

"Oh, give me a look!" Martha begged, intrigued by the idea of reading a book that hadn't even been written yet in her own time-line. "I love Harry Potter. Why were you crying? Does someone die?"

Stretching out her arm, she tried again to grab the book, only to have Tejana slip off the seat and twirl away beyond her reach.

"Uh-uh-uh!" she taunted, dangling the book enticingly high in the air. "Privileged information - Time Lord eyes only!"

Martha growled and leapt after her, and was soon chasing her back and forth around the console, both of them giggling like maniacs as they dodged around the startled Doctor.

"Oi, you two!" he protested. "I'm in the middle of some delicate recalibration calculations here, you know!"

Tejana cheekily poked her tongue out at her father and then went to sit back down on the pilot seat to resume reading her book. The Doctor rolled his eyes at her good-humouredly, before going back to what he was doing. "Kids!"

"So where are we headed then, Doctor?" Martha asked, looking over his shoulder, hoping to see the name of somewhere exotic coming up on the navigational screen.

"Cardiff," he replied abstractedly.

Martha's face fell in disappointment. "_Cardiff?_" she echoed. In her opinion, Cardiff was about as exotic as a pair of wet wellington boots. Here she was, travelling through time and space with a nine hundred year old alien and his daughter in their miraculous time machine, and the best they could come up with was _Cardiff_?

The Doctor caught her dismayed expression and his brown eyes twinkled. "Ah, but the thing about Cardiff is that it's built on a rift in time and space - just like California and the San Andreas Fault," he told her. "The rift _bleeds_ energy. Every now and then I need to open up the engines, soak up the energy and use it as fuel."

"So it's a pit-stop?" Martha felt her spirits rising as she realised this was going to be a very short visit to Wales after all. Besides, it didn't really matter where they went. She could never stay down when in his company - just looking into those gorgeous brown eyes was always enough to brighten her day.

"Exactly," the Doctor confirmed, oblivious to her adoring glance. "Should only take twenty seconds. Tejana, come over here and finish these calculations for me while I land her, will you?"

The dark-haired girl put down her book, yawned with the air of someone who had seen it all before, and wandered over to stand beside him, taking over the keyboard he had been working on. The Doctor activated the landing controls and a panoramic view of Roald Dahl Plass filled the TARDIS viewscreen, the magnificent Millennium fountain taking pride of place.

The Doctor flicked a couple of switches, his eyebrows raised in faint surprise. "The Rift's been active..." he murmured.

"Wait a minute!" Martha exclaimed, suddenly remembering that this particular part of the Earth hadn't always been quite so boring. "They had an earthquake in Cardiff a couple of years ago. Was that you?"

The Doctor and Tejana exchanged a guilty glance, like two children caught out doing something naughty.

"Bit of trouble with the Slitheen..." Tejana said with a wry grimace, as her fingers continued to dance over the keyboard in front of her.

"Long time ago," the Doctor mused, staring into space. "Lifetimes. I was a different man back then."

Martha watched his face, wondering what memories he was seeing, wishing he would share them with her. But she had been travelling with him long enough now to know better than to ask. Neither he nor Tejana ever liked talking about themselves. As far as they were concerned, their personal past was a closed book. Like the seventh Harry Potter book just now, it was one that Martha wasn't allowed to open.

At that moment, a small beep from the console seemed to drag the Time Lord back to the present.

"Finito," he said in satisfaction, double checking a small dial on one of the control panels. "All powered up."

"_Doctor!_" The sharp, almost panicked urgency in Tejana's voice made both the Doctor and Martha whirl around to look at her. She had stopped typing and was staring at the small view-screen on the console, her face tight with shock. A handsome dark-haired man in a long, blue coat was rapidly running across the Plass towards the TARDIS, his mouth stretched wide in a soundless shout, a large pack bouncing awkwardly on his back.

The newcomer didn't look particularly threatening as far as Martha could see but, at the sight of him, the Doctor's face went strangely white. His hand shot out like lightning and slammed down the de-materialisation lever as fast as he could.

"No! What are you _doing_?" Tejana screamed, as the time rotor began once more to oscillate. "That was Jack! Doctor, that was _Jack_!"

Outside, something struck the exterior of the TARDIS with a huge amount of force and everything inside lurched and shook. The three time travellers were hurled bodily to the floor as green sparks streamed from the time-rotor in a crackling cascade and a high-pitched whining sound filled the air.

"Whoa! What's happening?" Martha cried, desperately trying to keep herself in one place by clinging on to the shuddering console. Not far away, on the Doctor's other side, Tejana was doing exactly the same thing.

The Doctor dragged himself back up to the navigational monitor, brushing some sparks out of his hair. Smoke was billowing all around them, filling the room.

"We're accelerating into the future!" he yelled back, one foot planted on the console to maintain his balance, all his concentration centred on the wildly spinning diagrams on the screen in front of him. "The year one billion. Five billion. Five trillion. Fifty trillion. _What? _The year one hundred trillion. That's impossible!"

At the bewildered sound of his voice, Martha felt a cold screw of fear gyrating inside her stomach. The Doctor _always_ knew what was going on – in all the time she had known him, no matter what disaster had befallen them, his calm unflappability had always been as certain as the rising of the sun. But if even _he _was alarmed...how bad could it possibly be?

"Why? What happens then?"

The Doctor's eyes were wide with incredulity. For a moment, his lips worked and no sound came out. Then he managed to croak, "We're going to the end of the Universe."

* * *

Tejana could sense the TARDIS shooting through the Time Vortex, like a bullet fired from a gun. Behind her closed eyelids, visions of Captain Jack Harkness flashed in and out of her brain, running so lithely across the Plass, not dead, not disintegrated by the Daleks, but as large as life... Her hearts twisted painfully at the impossible images and the pressure inside her head seemed immense, as if a giant fist was crushing her mind. Panic rose inside her. Wherever they were headed, there was something critical waiting for her, she could feel it. She didn't know how and she didn't know why, but she suddenly felt as if she was on _The Titanic_, heading for the biggest iceberg of all, something with the potential to derail her entire life.

_Stop it_, she wanted to scream at the Doctor, her knuckles white with strain as she dug her fingers into the console. _You have to stop this now, before it's too late!_

But just one look at his horrified face as the situation continue to escalate soon told her that he could no more stop the TARDIS than she could.

At last, just as she thought she could bear it no longer, the time machine gave an enormous shudder and was still. The time-rotor seemed to give an exhausted sigh, before slowly subsiding back into the console.

"Well, we've landed," the Doctor said, breaking the sudden, shocked silence. "Is everyone all right?"

"Fine," Martha answered in evident relief.

"Tejana?"

She faced him, standing tall, every line in her slender body as taut as a wire. "No!" she snapped, her eyes blazing, fury and fear churning through her in equal measure. "I'm _not_ all right! What the _hell_ did you do that for? Don't you get it, that was _Jack _back there!"

To her utter bewilderment, her father's expression remained closed and unreadable. "Yes, I know."

"But he was _alive_!" she shouted, frustrated at his apparent incomprehension, unable to understand why he wasn't as stunned and elated as she was. "He was alive and you left him behind!"

The Doctor didn't answer. He merely looked down at the console and fiddled with some of the dials, his face as still as stone.

"Oh gods," she whispered, her hand coming up to cover her mouth as the awful realisation suddenly struck her. "You _knew_. You knew he was alive all the time and you let me think the Daleks killed him."

His mouth tightened into a hard, uncompromising line. "I had my reasons," he said curtly.

Tejana shook her head in bitter incredulity, sickness rising from the pit of her stomach as the enormity of his newest betrayal slowly sank in. All that time she had spent grieving for Jack, all the sorrow and self-blame she had suffered, and all along the Doctor had known none of it was necessary.

"You liar!" she exclaimed in a low voice, loaded with venom. "You disgusting, filthy liar! How _could _you?"

He took a step towards her, his hand raised entreatingly towards her. "Tejana..."

"No...no, don't you _touch_ me!" she spat, backing away from him. "You never change, do you? After everything you did in the Time War and still, you never, never change!"

Trembling with rage, she whirled around and ran for the exterior doors, not caring where she went, just desperate to get as far away from him as possible.

"Wait, Tejana, you can't go out there!" he called urgently after her. "Not even the Time Lords came this far! We can't stay here, we have to go!"

"Don't you _dare_ tell me what to do!" she snarled. "Don't you _dare_!"

With that she wrenched open the doors and tumbled out into the darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Author's Note: _**

**_Thanks very much to SawManiac211, MayFairy, Aietradaea, Theta'sWorstNightmare and EmmaMarie for reviewing, you guys are wonderful :)_  
**

**_Anyway, here's the next little bit I was talking about. Hope you enjoy!  
_**

* * *

**- Chapter Two -**

It was freezing cold outside, as black as pitch and exceedingly bleak. The TARDIS appeared to have landed in some sort of rocky valley, surrounded by towering cliffs. The ground was shiny and slick, as if it had just been raining.

Tejana turned the collar of her jacket up against the cold. Suddenly, something large and dark caught her eye, lying on the ground not far away. Both her hearts nearly stopped as she saw it was a body... a body wearing a long, blue coat.

"Jack!" she cried, running towards his crumpled figure. He was lying on his back, his eyes staring sightlessly up at the dark sky.

But before she could get too close, something seemed to rise up and strike her between the eyes, a tsunami of soul-shattering disgust so great that she staggered backwards. Again and again, she tried to get close to the fallen man, only to be driven back by her own revulsion each time, stumbling and almost falling, gasping for breath. To her horror, she realised that the overwhelming sense of abomination was actually emanating from Jack himself. Time was streaming madly around him without touching him, peeling back from him, as if he was a dark, immovable rock in the middle of a raging river. To a Time Lord, such an unnatural effect was almost physically distressing.

Strong hands gripped her from behind, catching and supporting her so she didn't fall. "Now do you understand?" her father's voice said softly in her ear. "I was trying to protect you."

She was vaguely aware of Martha pushing past them, rushing to Jack's side and falling to her knees beside him. The human woman showed no ill-effects from his nearness, completely unaware of the temporal abhorrence that hung in the air like a miasma.

"Oh my God!" she exclaimed, catching sight of Jack's face. "It's that bloke from Cardiff." She fumbled clumsily at his wrist. "Can't get a pulse. Hold on, you've got that medical kit thing."

Leaping to her feet, she charged back inside the TARDIS, leaving the two Time Lords standing together looking down at their old comrade. Tejana turned her face into her father's shoulder, great shudders wracking her body, tears falling down her face. "Oh stars," she breathed, unable to believe that she had found Jack alive, only to lose him again like this. "What's happened to him?"

The Doctor's arms tightened comfortingly around her, tucking her into the warmth of his body, his chin resting on the top of her head. "The Daleks did kill him on Satellite Five. But Rose used the power of the Bad Wolf to bring him back to life. She couldn't control it and she brought him back permanently. She made him immortal, Tejana. He's a fixed point in Time and he can't ever die. That's why he feels so wrong to you now."

Tejana choked back a sob. _A fixed point in Time! _No wonder she could hardly bear to look at him. To a time-sensitive being, anything so immutable, so changeless, so contrary to the ebb and flow of history, could only be an anathema.

But before she could even begin to grasp the implications of what had befallen Jack, Martha burst out of the TARDIS again, holding the all-purpose medical kit. "Here we go!" she said, her tone brisk and efficient, in her element now as all her medical training came to the fore. "Out of the way!"

Rushing back over to Jack, she flipped open the medical kit and began rapidly sorting through the contents until she found a stethoscope. "What I don't understand is how he got here!" she exclaimed, putting the rubber earpieces into her ears. "I mean, one minute he's running towards us in Cardiff, the next minute he's here at the end of the Universe!"

"He came with us," the Doctor said quietly.

Martha glanced up at him in amazement. "What...all the way from Earth?"

"He must have been clinging to the outside of the TARDIS," the Doctor surmised, watching as she placed the end of the stethoscope against Jack's chest. "All the way through the Vortex. Well, that's very him!"

Martha moved the stethoscope back and forth, evidently finding nothing. "All that stuff between you two in the TARDIS...You know him, don't you?" she said, her dark eyes keenly surveying the Doctor's impassive expression and taking in the way Tejana was so uncharacteristically huddled against him, her face hidden in his shoulder. "Both of you. Who is he?"

"A friend of ours," the Doctor replied. "Used to travel with us. Back in the old days."

"But he's..." She hesitated, obviously trying to break the news to them gently. "I'm sorry, there's no heartbeat. There's nothing. He's dead."

At that moment, the so-called corpse sucked in a huge gasp of air and bolt upright, clutching at Martha's shoulders as she screamed in shock.

* * *

Yet again, Captain Jack Harkness dragged himself back from the dark abyss of death, clawing for the light through a tunnel made of broken, black glass. All he could remember were the never-ending spirals of the Time Vortex, cindering his flesh, burning through his brain.

_Death by Time Vortex, _he thought muzzily. _Never done that before. __That's a new one to add to my list!_

He could sense someone leaning over him and he could smell an enticing, musky fragrance like warm cinnamon. Sucking in the cold, life-giving air in huge, ragged gulps, he reared up, his hands automatically reaching for the human reassurance of the warm body crouching beside him. A woman's sharp, terrified scream rang out and he forced open his eyes. To his surprise, he found he was holding on tightly to an attractive woman with dark hair and smooth, coffee-coloured skin.

"It's all right!" she exclaimed breathlessly, obviously getting over her initial alarm. "Breath deep! I've got you!"

He had no idea where he was and no idea who she was, but he couldn't see any reason to let that spoil his enjoyment of the situation. After all, if returning from the dead in the arms of a beautiful woman was the worst thing to happen to him today, things were definitely looking up.

"Captain Jack Harkness!" he introduced himself, his tone light and suggestive and full of potential seduction, his hand rising to playfully brush her pretty little chin with his thumb. "And _who_ are _you_?"

The woman smiled down at him in a flustered way, obviously flattered by the appreciative expression in his eyes. "Martha Jones."

_Ah, _he thought in self-satisfaction. _The old Harkness charm, works every time!_

"Nice to meet you, Martha Jones."

"Oh, don't start!" a scathing male voice cut in.

Looking beyond Martha, he felt his heart turn over as he saw the distinctive shape of the tall, blue police-box. And standing in front of it were a man and a woman. The man was tall and thin, with an impressive shock of spiky brown hair and neatly cut side-burns. He was wearing a long, tan-coloured coat over a brown, pin-striped suit, with a pair of white Converse runners on his feet. The woman was nestled in the curve of his arm, held closely against his chest. She was facing away from Jack, but he could see she was small and slender, with a long, familiar plait of midnight-dark hair reaching all the way down her back. Even though the man's face was strange to him, and he couldn't see the woman's, he had no doubt he was looking at the two people he had waited for over a century to find. The realisation that he had finally done it was surreal, almost overwhelming in its intensity.

Neither of them made any move to approach him, leaving Martha to help him on her own. Instead, they carefully maintained their distance, as though he had some kind of virulent disease they were afraid of catching. Tejana kept her back to him, her face averted, as if she didn't even want to look at him. Resentment lanced through him like a razor-sharp javelin. So much searching, so long waiting, just for this! But he was damned if he would let them see how much their lack of concern had hurt him. They were Time Lords, and he had learned long ago that Time Lords didn't always react the way humans did.

"I was just saying hello!" he retorted, resuming his flirtatious routine by giving Martha another devilish smile.

The dark-skinned woman gave a feminine little giggle. "Oh, I don't mind!"

Supporting his arm with surprising strength, she helped to lever him to his feet. To his relief, he could already feel his usual vigour returning, rushing back through his body like a tide of adrenaline. Straightening his back, he eyed the two Time Lords warily.

"Doctor," he said, the greeting cold and even.

The Time Lord raised his chin and gave a small nod. "Captain," he replied, his tone equally brusque and emotionless.

Jack's eyes dropped to the smaller figure of the woman. "Tejana."

For a moment, she didn't respond and he wondered if she intended to ignore him altogether. But then she pulled away from her father and slowly turned around, at last enabling him to see the delicately-featured face, dominated by a pair of large, dark-blue eyes, even more beautiful than he remembered. Immediately, he saw that he had badly misjudged her by assuming she didn't care. There were fresh tear-stains on her pale cheeks, something he had rarely seen in the time they had travelled together. Not only that, now that he thought about it, the very fact that she had even allowed the Doctor to hold her was extremely unusual. Normally, if someone tried to comfort her, especially her father, she would become irritable and shake them off after a couple of seconds. Vulnerability had never been something she did well.

"Jack," she said hoarsely, the single syllable sounding forced, as though she was unable to trust her voice not to tremble.

It was all Jack could do not to step forward and take her into his arms. _God_, he'd missed her! He'd missed them both, these mad, impossible, infuriating, irresistible Time Lords. But something about the way they were both standing warned him that, right now, such an affectionate greeting wasn't a good idea.

"Good to see you both," he continued, his manner formally polite instead.

"And you," the Doctor replied. "Same as ever. Although...have you had work done?"

Jack's eyebrows shot up sky high. "You can talk!"

The Doctor looked down at himself with a puzzled expression, as if he wasn't quite sure what Jack was talking about. Then he seemed to suddenly remember that he had looked very, very different the last time they had seen each other. "Oh yes! The face! Regeneration. How did you manage to find us?"

"The police box in the middle of the Plass kinda gave it away," Jack said dryly, fresh bitterness welling up inside him. As much as he had missed the two Time Lords, there was something important he wanted from them other than their company. Seeing them again had ripped the scabs off a multitude of old wounds. More than anything, he wanted them to give him the answers he needed. "I've been following you for a long time." His voice hardened into cold stone. "You abandoned me."

Martha gave a little gasp and Tejana visibly flinched, as if he had reached out and slapped her. The Doctor, however, gave no sign of any reaction. "Did we?" he asked coolly. "Busy life. Move on."

Jack swallowed hard. He wasn't sure exactly what he had expected from the Doctor when he found him again. Apologies, maybe, for leaving him behind. Excuses. _Reasons_. But not this blank wall of sheer indifference. "I gotta ask," he persisted. "The Battle of Canary Wharf. I saw the list of the dead. It said Rose Tyler."

As far as questions went, he couldn't have chosen a better one to break down the barriers between them. At the sound of Rose's name, the Doctor's face lit up in a huge smile. For the first time, Jack caught a glimpse of the warmth and vitality he remembered so well. "Oh no! Sorry! She's alive!"

Jack grinned, an enormous wave of relief swamping him. "You're kidding?"

"Parallel world, safe and sound. And Mickey! And her mother!"

"OH, YES!" Jack shouted. Overwhelmed with delight, he ran forward without thinking and enveloped the Doctor in an enormous bear hug, lifting him right off the ground. At first, he felt the Time Lord's slim body tense in his grasp, as if he was afraid Jack might bite. But then he gradually relaxed and laughed, returning Jack's embrace enthusiastically.

Martha, on the other hand, didn't look pleased at all. The look on her face was somehow bitter, as though she had bitten into a particularly sour lemon. "Yeah," Jack heard her mutter. "Good old Rose."

And Tejana... Jack caught her eyes over the Doctor's shoulder and held them. For a moment, she returned his gaze. There was an odd, lost expression on her face, one he couldn't read or interpret. Then she pulled her eyes abruptly away from his, wrapped her arms around herself as though trying to protect herself from the cold, and turned and walked away.

* * *

**_Another Author's Note: Yeah, there is a bit more already written. Once I give it a bit of an edit, I will post it, if anyone's interested..._**


	3. Chapter 3

**_Author's Note:_  
**

**_Ooooh, thank you very much to the following people for their reviews: MayFairy, GuesssWho, Theta'sWorstNightmare, SawManiac211, EDZEL2 (x 2), EmmaMarie, Imorgen (x 2), silentnight and TheWickedHeart for their reviews. I wasn't at all sure anyone was reading this, so your feedback has been very heartening!  
_**

**_To silentnight: I totally agree, this trilogy of episodes are among my most favourite ever, so it's a delight to write my interpretation of them. I'm truly happy that you'll be following along while I do it :) Thanks very much for the review!  
_**

**_So, I guess, since a few people are interested, here is the next little bit of the manuscript I have blown the dust off...  
_**

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**- Chapter Three -**

The chilled, dank breeze blew across the rocky, distorted landscape, rushing into Tejana's face as she walked, brushing over her skin and cooling her heated cheeks. She had no real desire to explore this dark, dismal planet. But the alternative was to return to the confines of the TARDIS, and right now she didn't think she could handle that, so she kept on walking, not even really seeing where she was going. Her head was aching and everything inside her felt tight and twisted.

She felt disgusted and angry with herself. She had wanted so badly to hug Jack, wanted to feel his strong arms around her again; she wanted to tell him how happy she was to see him and to know that he was safe. She wanted to tell him how much she had missed him; how hard it had been on the TARDIS without him, watching Rose and the Doctor growing closer and closer, while she remained always on the outside; how, in the end, she couldn't stand it any more – the persistent grief and guilt she had felt for him, the mounting resentment she felt for Rose - and she had left for a long while, choosing to aimlessly wander alone on the Earth rather than deal with it any more.

But, unlike the Doctor, she had been unable to bring herself to speak, let alone touch him, no matter how hard she tried, and her failure burned her inside like acid.

Distantly, she became aware that her father had caught up with her and was walking beside her, keeping pace with her, while the other two brought up the rear, already chatting away like old friends.

_Are you all right? _the Doctor asked silently, opening the psychic link between them.

She folded her arms even more closely around herself, as if she was trying to prevent herself from coming apart at the seams.

_When you kept it from us...when you didn't tell us what had really happened to him,_ she responded, also making use of the link. _Did you really do it to protect me? Or was it to protect Rose?_

The Doctor hesitated for a moment, his eyes on his feet as he strode along. Then he replied, _Both of you. Rose would never have been able to understand what she had done to him. That's why I had to tell her he'd left us to help the humans rebuild what the Daleks destroyed. _

_And me? You told me what you'd said to her wasn't true, that he was really dead. WHY?_

_I knew you'd insist on going back otherwise, to be with him...I'd watched you getting so close to him, closer than you'd allowed anyone for such a long time...and then..._

_And then WHAT? _she demanded angrily. _I had the right to know, Doctor! Even if you think you did it for the best, I'm not a child any more and you can't keep making my choices for me! Whatever has happened to him, whatever Rose did to him, he's still JACK, our Jack, and that's all that should count!_

_Is he? _the Doctor responded, his brown eyes now just as stony as they had been earlier. _Is he really? Are you sure about that?_

In the background, Tejana could hear Jack cheerfully explaining to Martha what had happened on Satellite Five. "So there I was, stranded in the year 200,100, ankle deep in Dalek dust, and this lot just take off without me!"

It was the last straw for Tejana. She couldn't bear him thinking she had intentionally deserted him. That had been the Doctor's choice – let _him_ take responsibility for it. She whirled around sharply, stopping Jack in his tracks. "It wasn't like that!" she snapped. "I didn't know! I didn't _know_! I thought you were _dead_!"

Jack's eyes slid questioningly to the Doctor, who put his hands casually in his coat pockets and said nothing. The ocean-blue gaze returned to search Tejana's flushed, stormy features. "And are you glad I'm not?" he asked quietly.

"Of course I am!" she cried. "How can you even_ ask _that?"

"Maybe because you're still having such a hard time looking at me." And before she could step backwards into safety, he extended his hand and stroked the back of his fingers down the softness of her cheek. At his touch, the wrongness of his aura enveloped her, crashing over her like a terrible wave, stealing her breath and almost sweeping her away. She closed her eyes tightly, automatically protecting herself against the dizzying sensation.

_Oh gods, was this it? Was Jack's unnatural immortality the iceberg she had sensed heading towards her? Was this the collision that was destined to derail her life and everything she believed in? _

A violent shudder crept up her spine, her first instinct to run and run and run, far away, and never look back. Nevertheless, with a supreme effort of will, she forced herself to remain motionless, allowing him to do whatever he wished.

_This is Jack, our Jack, and that's all that should matter_, she repeated to herself passionately.

His fingers slid beneath her chin, tilting her face up towards him. His touch was gentle, but his voice was like iron. "_Look_ at me, Tejana."

She could feel her father tense nearby in concern, all his muscles tightening, as if he was intending to intervene. _Tejana...?_

But Tejana's lips thinned into a stubborn line. She wasn't going to run from this. Running was her father's way of dealing with a difficult situation; it would never be hers. She had too much first-hand knowledge of how much pain it could cause.

_No...no, it's all right, Doctor. I'm fine, really. I can do this._

Slowly, very slowly, she opened her eyes and her gaze locked with Jack's, all the while fighting the driving compulsion to run. The only thing she could hear was the steady throbbing of her own double heartbeat, pounding out a warning in her ears. He looked so different. His usually twinkling blue eyes were suddenly much too old and hard for his handsome face - eyes that had lived too long and seen too much. Eyes that, if she hadn't known better, she would have said belonged to a Time Lord, not a human. In that moment, he looked so much like a stranger that she almost made a break for it, despite all her good intentions. But then he blinked and grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners with teasing humour like they always had, and he was Jack again, just as she remembered him.

"That's better," he said softly. "Hello."

All at once, it was there again, the same old warmth, swelling between them. Mesmerised by the blueness of his gaze, Tejana could feel her body relaxing, gradually accepting the strange new reality of his. The wrongness was still there – it was indelible, part of him forever now – but she knew it wasn't who he was inside. With every second that passed, looking deep into his eyes, she was finding his transformation easier to cope with; it was easier to see past it, to find the friend she had lost, rather than the temporal anomaly he had become.

A tremulous smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. "Hello," she responded, her voice coming out lower and huskier than she had intended.

Jack's teasing grin softened into something more intimate and the firm fingers under her chin gentled almost to a caress. Realising she had been unconsciously holding her breath, Tejana released it in a rush, feeling a tiny tingle of triumph, like a mountaineer who had successfully climbed a very difficult peak, or a runner who had won the hardest race of all.

Behind her, the Doctor cleared his throat loudly and pointedly. At the sound, Jack gave his head an odd little shake, as if he was suddenly remembering where they were. Reluctantly, he allowed the moment to break and his hand dropped away from her face.

"Anyway," he continued, returning his attention to Martha and continuing his story, as if nothing had happened. "Luckily, I had this." He tapped the device strapped to his right wrist. "I used to be a Time Agent. It's called a vortex manipulator. These two aren't the only ones who can time travel."

"Oh, excuse me!" the Doctor said huffily, starting to walk again, his long legs easily covering the rough terrain, so that his companions almost had to break into a trot to keep up. "That is _not_ time travel. It's like...we've got a sports car and you've got a space hopper!"

"Oh ho!" Martha exclaimed, giving Tejana a sly wink, her dark eyes dancing with amusement at the sudden surge of testosterone between the two men. "Boys and their toys!"

Tejana smiled back, a small burst of joy fizzing along her veins at the familiarity of it. Jack and the Doctor had always done this. From the moment they had met, as childish as it was for two grown men, they had engaged in this ridiculous game of one-upmanship, always competing to see who was the biggest and the best. Back then, she had found it extremely annoying. Now, though, it was so much like old times that it seemed like the Universe was finally coming right again.

Jack shrugged and rolled his eyes at the Doctor's taunt. "All right, so I _bounced_! I thought the 21st century would be the best place to find them again, except I got it a little wrong. Arrived in 1869, this thing burnt out, so it was useless."

"Told you," the Doctor inserted smugly.

"I had to live through the entire twentieth century, waiting for a version of you that would coincide with me!" Jack shot back, and now there was a distinct thread of bitterness running through his careless banter. Tejana shot a sidelong glance at her father, wondering how he intended answering what had effectively been a direct accusation. But if Jack had been hoping for some sort of commiseration or approbation from the Time Lord, he was clearly wasting his time, because the Doctor merely kept on walking, without making any comment at all.

Martha, however, was staring at Jack in consternation. "But...that makes you more than one hundred years old!"

"And lookin' good, doncha think?" he said proudly. "So I went to the time rift, based myself there, because I knew the TARDIS would need to come back to refuel. Then, finally, I got a signal on this..." He gestured vaguely towards the large pack on his back. "...detecting the Doctor...and here we are."

"But the thing is..." Martha continued, her expression wrinkling into a frown, evidently trying to piece together the truth of what had happened back on Satellite Five. "Why did you leave him behind, Doctor?"

_Go on, Doctor, _Tejana urged silently, her mental voice as sharp as a hidden razor blade. _Why don't you tell her? Why don't you tell them both?_

Her father's brown eyes clashed with hers, and she could see the anger burning inside them. But she didn't flinch, meeting his fury with challenging defiance. No matter what Jack had become, what the Doctor had done was wrong, on every level, and she needed to let him know it. He had been responsible for Jack, not only as a companion, but as a friend, and he had let him down in the worst way possible.

_He waited over a hundred years for us, Doctor! An explanation is the least that you owe him! _she snapped. _Tell him!_

But the Doctor had no intention of admitting he'd been wrong. "I was busy," he said aloud, his tone full of icicles.

"So is that what happens though, seriously?" Martha persisted, unaware of the silent, angry dispute between father and daughter. "Do you just get bored with us one day and disappear?"

Jack gave a sarcastic snort. "Not if you're blonde!"

"Oh, she was _blonde_!" Martha threw her hands in the air in a gesture of exaggerated shock. "_What_ a surprise!"

At that, the Doctor's barely-restrained temper bubbled over. "You two!" he bit out, turning on them abruptly. "We're at the end of the Universe, all right? Right at the edge of knowledge itself... and you're busy... _blogging_! Now _come on_!"

Furiously, he strode away, his brown coat flapping around his ankles, leaving his startled companions blinking at each other in shock. For a moment, Martha even looked like she might cry. Tejana sighed inwardly. This always seemed to happen, every single time Rose's name came up – the Doctor got angry and Martha became unhappy. It was a horrible, unchanging pattern. Moving over to her friend, she slipped a comforting arm around her shoulders.

Then, glancing up at Jack, she said wryly, "Welcome to the new Team TARDIS, Captain."


	4. Chapter 4

**_Author's Note: Hello! Thanks very much to everyone who reviewed since the last chapter was published - MayFairy, SawManiac211, EmmaMarie, Theta'sWorstNightmare,TheWickedHeart, Imorgen, silentnight, mericat (x 3), and MountainLord-92 (x 2)._  
**

**_To silentnight: Thanks so much for the review, very happy to have made you smile. Yeah, things could have been very different for Tejana if the Doctor had told her the truth back on Satellite Five. Now that would have been a whole different story :)  
_**

**_This chapter is for Theta'sWorstNightmare, who reminded me I should be getting on with it XXX  
_**

* * *

**- CHAPTER FOUR -**

Tejana watched her father walk over to the edge of the nearest cliff, where he stood silhouetted against the cold, dark sky, his long brown coat swirling in the breeze. His hands were still casually in his pockets, but his back was tense and rigid. All his mental barriers were up, closing his mind tightly against her, an unmistakeable and pointed message that he was angry with her and didn't want to talk.

How much of that was about losing Rose, and how much was down to the fact that he knew his daughter was right and he had treated Jack badly, she didn't know. Tejana had been miles and miles away from Canary Wharf the day Rose had fallen into the alternate dimension, but she had still felt her father's anguish and shock, shooting through the psychic link like a razor-sharp arrow. Since then, he had always refused to talk about it and she had never pushed him. She and Rose had never been friends, and it felt much too hypocritical to trespass on his grief by trying to offer him any sympathy. Most of the time, he bottled it up and carried on, as if nothing had happened. But every now and then, like now, something would remind him of his loss, and his pain would leak out around the edges, usually in the form of an explosion of irrational, directionless anger.

_Seeing Jack again has to be as potent a reminder of Rose as he could get_, Tejana thought. Despite her fury at him for what he had done, she felt her hearts twist in compassion. Whatever else Rose had been, she had been the Doctor's salvation from the darkness and blood-lust of the Time War. It was no wonder he was still reeling from the shock of losing her. He had done a terrible thing in abandoning Jack, but in the end, he had paid a very heavy price of his own.

She walked over to stand beside him. He was staring unseeingly out over a deep canyon, his eyes dark with loss. Carefully, making sure she didn't intrude on his psychic "keep-out" signs, she brushed her mind delicately against his, a mute gesture of conciliation, the mental equivalent of taking his hand in hers. His head turned and he looked at her, recognising the olive branch for what it was. Then he smiled, one eyebrow raised, the edges of his mouth quirking ruefully. It was the expression she privately called his "puppy-dog" look. She had seen it often enough before. It was the one he reserved for when he knew he had done the wrong thing but didn't want to admit it. Knowing her father as well as she did, Tejana guessed that this was all the apology she was going to get for his lies to her.

"Is that a city?" Martha's voice interrupted behind them. She had followed Tejana over to the edge and was now gazing down into the depths of the yawning chasm.

Tejana was momentarily distracted by the prickly sensation of Jack moving up to stand close beside her. Fighting back the dizziness his mere presence still evoked, she forced herself to concentrate on the astonishing vista spread out below them. The walls of the canyon were honey-combed from top to bottom with doors and windows, expertly carved out of the stone, obviously representing level after level of residential dwellings. Thin rock bridges networked back and forth, connecting the different sections, fitting the city together into a compact and efficient whole. The place was brilliantly designed and looked as if it should have been bustling with life. However, there was no sign of movement anywhere. Everything was dry and covered with dust, and there was no sound except for the wind whistling eerily through the empty doors and windows.

An involuntary shiver feathered over Tejana's skin, a gut-reaction which had nothing to do with the icy chill in the air. This haunted place may once have been a city, but now it was nothing more than a home for ghosts.

"A city or a hive. Or a nest. Or a conglomeration," the Doctor speculated. "Looks like it was grown." He pointed towards the fragile stone bridges. "But look there. That looks like pathways...roads. Must have been some sort of life. Long ago."

"That's so sad," Tejana murmured. "Everything they were, all that they achieved...all their hopes and fears, all their successes and failures, all their victories and defeats...just gone, as if they never existed in the first place. And nobody left in all of time and space to remember them."

_Like Gallifrey. _The bitter comparison rose unbidden in her mind, the desolation of the Time War still as fresh to her as if it had all happened just yesterday. _A billion years of history, of intellectual supremacy and dominance, and where is she now? Where are her people? Just the two of us left_. _Out of so many, just two, to remember and to grieve. And when we're gone, who will remember the Time Lords then? No-one...no-one at all._

She felt the Doctor's eyes moving to rest on her face. He didn't need the psychic link to know what she was thinking – probably because he was thinking it too. This time, it was his mind that brushed hers, softly and fleetingly, a tiny nudge of comfort.

"What killed it?" Martha asked, oblivious of the emotional undercurrent between the two Time Lords, her tone hushed in awe.

"Time. Just time," the Doctor said. "Everything's dying now. All the great civilizations have gone." He looked up into the black sky. "This isn't just night. All the stars have burned up and faded away...into nothing."

"They must have an atmospheric shell," Jack commented. "We should be frozen to death."

The Doctor shot him a sidelong look. "Well...Tejana, Martha and I, perhaps. Not so sure about you, Jack."

Tejana saw Jack flinch a little at the acute observation, but he didn't reply. She couldn't help wondering how much the Captain knew about his own condition. He had to have figured out by now that he couldn't die. Aside from the obvious fact that he wasn't aging, a man like Jack couldn't live through nearly one hundred and fifty years without taking some risks. Going by the harsh, wearied look she had seen in his blue eyes earlier, she'd be willing to bet he'd already 'died' and come back any number of times, over and over again. The question was, did he know why it kept happening? Did he know he was a fixed point in time? Since the Doctor hadn't exactly stuck around to explain it to him, probably not. It wasn't the sort of thing a human would be able to figure out on his own, even an extraordinary human like Jack. Which meant he had no idea why it was suddenly so hard for the two Time Lords to be around him.

_Oh Jack, _she thought painfully. _What have we done to you?_

The Doctor had been right about one thing – if he had told her the truth on Satellite Five, nothing would have stopped her going back to Jack. And at least then, he would have had some help understanding and dealing with what had happened to him. Without the Doctor's interference, things could have been very different for all of them right now. For one thing, they wouldn't all be standing here in this cold, dead place at the end of the Universe.

"What about the people?" Martha was asking, wrapping her arms around herself in an attempt to keep warm. "Does no-one survive?"

"I s'pose...we have to hope," the Doctor responded with his usual indomitable optimism. "Life will find a way."

Jack gave an ironic snort. "Well, _he's _not doin' too bad!"

Startled, they all looked where he was pointing. Down below, a young, dark-haired man was running like the wind along one of the abandoned pathways, hotly pursued by a howling crowd of creatures brandishing flaming torches. Faintly, they could hear the word "HUMAN!" being screamed again and again, like a call to war.

"It is just me, or does that look like a _hunt_?" the Doctor snapped. "COME ON!"

With that, he charged off at a rate of knots, his white Converse trainers flying as he sped down the rocky hillside, obviously intent on going to the young man's assistance. What exactly he expected the three of them were going to do against such a ravening mob, Tejana had no idea.

_Oh gods, _she thought in exasperation, beginning to sprint along in his wake. _Here we go again, always with the running!_

As she raced along, she couldn't help thinking, not for the first time, that her father always tended to find it much easier to involve himself in the business of strangers rather than confronting the uncomfortable relationship issues sitting on his own back doorstep. Even here, at the very end of the Universe, he _still_ managed to find someone who needed his help.

Jack must have caught the resigned look on her face, because he gave a great shout of exultant laughter as he ran beside her, his back-pack bouncing madly on his back. "Ha-HA! Oh, baby, have I _missed_ this!"

As competitive as ever, Tejana tossed her head and automatically increased her speed, trying to outdistance him, but his teasing grin merely widened, his long legs easily keeping pace with her. Martha, somewhat hampered by her high-heeled boots, was left to bring up the rear, lagging a fair distance behind them.

Finally, they reached the bottom of the canyon. The young man, whom Tejana could now see was not much more than a boy, was running directly towards them, his face distorted in fear. Proving that he had only been playing with her before, Jack put on an extra burst of speed and easily pulled ahead of both Tejana and the Doctor, reaching the fleeing fugitive first and catching him firmly in his arms.

"I've got you!" he said reassuringly, forcibly drawing his target to a halt.

But the panicked man merely struggled harder, trying to pull away. "We've gotta run!" he screamed into Jack's face. "They're coming! They're coming!"

Sure enough, the pursuing horde was bearing down on them like a savage tidal wave, their flaming torches glaring in the darkness. As the creatures came closer, it was possible to see that they were humanoid in form, dressed in rough animal hides, their skins liberally decorated with dark tattoos, their hair long and wild and shaggy.

Jack's expression hardened, his blue eyes suddenly cold. Without hesitating, he smoothly thrust the young man into the Doctor's arms, before pulling out a revolver and expertly aiming it at the oncoming savages. From the ruthless look on his face, Tejana had no doubt that he was more than prepared to kill as many of them as he had to.

The Doctor obviously saw it too, because he immediately yelled, "Jack! Don't you dare!"

Jack jerked his head in frustration, but then raised the gun into the air, firing three quick shots in succession. The sharp, staccato sound tore through the air like a clap of thunder. The swarming creatures all stopped dead in their tracks, their eyes fixed on Jack, hovering warily, as if unsure whether or not to risk continuing their charge.

"What the hell are they?" Martha hissed across to Tejana.

"I don't know," the Time Lady responded tautly. "But I have a pretty strong hunch we shouldn't hang around to find out!"

The young man's eyes were wild with terror. "There's more of them!" he burst out, his voice hoarse and frantic. "We have to keep going!"

"I've got a ship nearby," the Doctor told him. "It's safe. It's not far, it's just over there..." He gestured back up the rocky slope they had just run down, only to see an even larger horde of savages pouring over the crest of the hill, effectively cutting them off from the sanctuary of the TARDIS.

"Or...maybe not," Tejana breathed.

Jack shifted back and forth, aiming his gun at each group in turn. Each time he moved, the group he was not covering crept closer, hungrily closing the gap between them and their prey. It was like a bizarre game of 'Statues', one which had lethal consequences for the losers.

"I can't hold them off forever, Doc!"

"We're close to the silo!" the young man gasped. "If we can get to the silo, we're safe!"

The Doctor looked urgently at his companions. "Silo?" he queried.

"I'm voting silo!" Tejana said emphatically.

"Silo!" Jack agreed.

"Silo for me!" Martha squeaked.

The Doctor released the young man and he tore away, frantically running in the same direction he had been heading before they interrupted him. Tejana, Jack, the Doctor and Martha all followed him as swiftly as they could, each of them spine-chillingly conscious of the feral whooping that erupted behind them as the savages enthusiastically resumed the hunt, this time with five prey in their sights instead of just one.

Pebbles rolled and skittered under Tejana's feet on the uneven path and her breath hung in great, frozen clouds of condensation every time she exhaled. They seemed to be running down some sort of makeshift road now, formed from huge tyre tracks, deeply and repeatedly scored into the mud. Their pursuers swarmed behind them, moving with frightful rapidity, gaining on them more and more every second. Up ahead, she could see the tyre tracks led to a tall wire-mesh gate, flanked by high, square watch-towers. There were black-dressed figures moving behind the mesh, all of them carrying what appeared to be semi-automatic machine guns. The ground in front of the gate had been churned by many feet into a boggy, sticky mess, providing clear evidence that the tribe of savages had visited here before.

Still in the lead, the young man made a bee-line for the armed encampment. "It's the Futurekind!" he shouted desperately. "Open the gate!"

"Show me your teeth!" the guard answered fiercely, pointing his weapon threateningly at them. Then, as they hesitated in incomprehension, his voice rose in urgent demand. "Show me your teeth! SHOW ME YOUR TEETH!"

The young man whirled on them. "Show them your teeth!" he cried.

Obediently, the four time-travellers bared their teeth, displaying them to the guard. Beside them, Tejana realised the young man was doing the same, his mouth stretched into a wide, grinning rictus.

"Human!" the guard called, lowering his machine gun. "Let 'em in! Let 'em in!"

Slowly – much, much too slowly for Tejana's taste – the huge gate slid open and the five of them ran inside.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Author's Note: Thanks very much to the reviewers of the previous chapter - MayFairy, Theta'sWorstNightmare, TheWickedHeart, silentnight and SawManiac211. **_

_**To silentnight - Thanks so much. It makes me very happy to know you're excited. Hopefully, I don't disappoint :)  
**_

* * *

- **CHAPTER FIVE** -

"Close! Close! Close!" the guard screamed, and the heavy mesh gate clanked shut behind the newcomers, just in time to halt the onrush of the pursuing savages.

There was an abrupt burst of automatic gunfire. Trying to control her breathing, Tejana skidded to a stop inside the compound and whirled around, only to see the guards firing another warning burst at the feet of the salivating mob. The creatures drew up short, gibbering in rage and frustration. They were obviously intelligent enough to recognise the imminent danger of the hail of bullets. Nevertheless, the insane hunger and bloodlust written across every one of their faces showed just how much they yearned to get inside the compound and rip the humans limb from limb. Now that they were a bit closer, it was easy to understand why the guards had been so insistent about inspecting the teeth of the new arrivals before allowing them inside the gate. Each of the savages had sharp, pointed fangs – the teeth of predators, of flesh-eaters, designed to rend and to kill.

One of the savages stepped forward, obviously their leader or chieftain, his fangs bared in a horrible grin. He seemed to be quite young, with dark wavy hair, pointed ears and a darkly tattooed face. Multiple piercings glittered across his forehead and down the bridge of his nose. His eyes were like hollow, empty pits.

"Humans!" he hissed in a harsh, discordant voice. "Humani!" He gestured towards his mouth in an unmistakeable mime of someone eating. "Make feast."

_Cannibals, _Tejana thought with a shiver of revulsion, imagining those sharp teeth tearing into her body. To a Time Lord, there was no worse crime. The Gallifreyans had always been largely vegetarian, choosing to live on the abundant fruit and vegetables grown on their home planet, rather than eating meat. Since leaving Gallifrey to travel the Universe, Tejana had become accustomed to a much more varied diet than she had experienced while growing up. But, even so, the idea of eating the flesh of another sentient being turned her stomach in utter disgust.

She shot an anxious look across at her father. The expression on his face was equally disturbed, his brown eyes intense and unusually serious as he stared through the gate at the leering chieftain.

The head guard raised his automatic weapon threateningly. "Go back where you came from!" he yelled, as the savage sidled defiantly nearer and nearer. "I _said_ go back! Go _back_!"

"Oh, don't tell_ him _to put down his gun!" Jack said in a low voice to the Doctor, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

"He's not my responsibility!" the Doctor shot back.

Jack raised his eyebrows. "And I am?" he scoffed. "Ha ha! That makes a change!"

"Kind can see you!" the Chieftain sing-songed mockingly, pointing through the wire mesh. Tejana swallowed hard and automatically edged closer to Jack. It was probably all in her head, but somehow it felt like the creature was pointing directly at her, as if she was first on their desired menu. The Chieftain performed his eating mime again and licked his lips. "Kind _hungry_!"

With a bestial snarl, he gestured at the other creatures hovering behind him. It was obviously some sort of signal to retreat, because they all began to back reluctantly away, disappearing back into the murky shadows. Satisfied that the altercation was over for now, the head guard turned away from the gate, leaving his men to keep watch after the departing cannibals.

"Thanks for that!" the Doctor said.

Then guard merely shrugged. From the unperturbed look on his face, Tejana gathered that this sort of heated confrontation between the humans and the savages was not in any way out of the ordinary. To this man, it seemed, it was all in a day's work. "Right! Let's get you all inside."

He began to march across the muddy compound, clearly expecting them to follow. The young man hurried to catch up with him. "My name...is Padrafet Shafekane!" he said breathlessly. "Please tell me, can you take me to Utopia?"

"Oh yes, sir," the guard responded cheerfully. "Yes, I can!"

With that, he led the way past an enormous All Terrain Vehicle with huge muddy wheels, over to a brightly-lit tunnel carved into the side of a mountain. The ATV was obviously the source of the deep wheel tracks that had formed the crude road outside the compound. It was armoured-plated and armed with two lethal-looking machine guns mounted on top, no doubt for protection against the animalistic Futurekind. Trailing slightly behind the rest of the small group, Tejana took a last look over her shoulder. None of the savages were visible on the stony hillside, but she could still feel their malevolent eyes, watching her. With another shudder, she returned her eyes to entrance to the silo ahead, eager to get inside to warmth and safety.

But then, an icy breeze gusted across the compound and, strangely, she found herself pausing, a frown etching itself into her brow. Noticing she was no longer with them, the Doctor looked back. "Tejana? What's the matter?"

She looked around, but was unable to see anything out of place. Nothing to account for her sudden hesitation. Nothing to support the ludicrous feeling that it was a lot less hazardous for her out here with a bunch of starving cannibals than it was inside, in that warm, bright bunker. "I...just thought I heard..."

"Heard what?"

She quickened her pace to rejoin her father. "Nothing. It doesn't matter."

After all, why would she have heard the faint, distant sound of drums beating on the wind?

_Drums that were coming for her... _

She shook her head slightly, trying to dislodge the unsettling sensation as they walked into the tunnel.

No, it had to be her imagination, that was all.

* * *

The guard led them through the tunnel and down some metal stairs, where he handed them over to a dark-skinned young officer named Lieutenant Atillo.

The Doctor introduced them all by name and Atillo looked them over critically, before activating a switch on the wall and speaking into what looked like a crude communicator.

"Professor! We've got four new humans inside. One of them is calling himself a Doctor."

A tinny voice echoed back out of the speaker. "Of medicine?"

Lieutenant Atillo looked inquiringly at the Doctor, who rubbed at the back of his neck and said modestly, "Weeeell...a Doctor of everything, really."

Despite the Doctor's ingratiating grin, the Lieutenant's face remained completely impassive, with no trace of an answering smile. He didn't comment, but simply turned back to the communicator and said, "He says of everything."

"A scientist? Oh, my word!" the voice said excitedly. "Just...just...oh, I'm coming!"

The communicator shut off with a sharp click. Tejana groaned inwardly. The voice had sounded quite elderly, so it seemed safe to assume that some fuddy-duddy old academic was about to descend on them. Right now, that was all she needed. She wondered if this Professor was the one in charge of this grim place. Perhaps it was some sort of research facility. Back on the surface, Padrafet Shafekane had referred to it as a 'silo'. But a silo for what?

She glanced around. The area where they were standing appeared to be a junction, with four passageways leading off from it in different directions, each of them with a metal mesh floor, each of them equally cramped and claustrophobic. Tejana's sensitive nose twitched uncomfortably. The air was ripe with the distinctive, earthy smell of unwashed human. Somewhere nearby, she guessed, there were a significant number of people living all crammed together, with limited access to any hygienic amenities. Not a scientific facility then – much more likely to be a refugee camp.

Padrafet had also mentioned going to a place called Utopia. Tejana remembered the guard saying he could take them there. As far as she was aware, in human mythology, Utopia represented the ideal or perfect place, effectively a paradise. But surely, even at the end of the Universe, nobody could call this stinking metal rabbit warren, hidden deep inside a mountain, Utopia? So where exactly was this promised paradise?

"It's a blue box!" the Doctor was saying to the Lieutenant, his voice tight with concern over their separation from the TARDIS. "A big blue box! I'm sorry, but I really need it back. It's stuck out there!"

On Atillo's other side, Padrafet Shafekane was also desperately trying to gain his attention. "I'm sorry!" he interrupted, raising his voice over the Doctor's. "But my family were heading for the silo. Did they get here? My mother is Kistane Shafekane. My brother is Beltone."

Despite everyone making demands on him at once, Lieutenant Atillo remained calm and unruffled.

"The computers are down," he said to Padrafet. "But you can check the paperwork." He glanced towards one of the corridors and yelled, "Creet!"

In response, a small, blonde, curly-haired boy, about ten years old, hurried around the corner, a clipboard held ready.

"Passenger needs help," Atillo said abruptly, indicating Padrafet.

_Passenger? _Tejana thought, her sharp ears homing in on the word. _Passenger on WHAT?_

"Right!" Creet replied, flipping some pages over on his clipboard. "What d'you need?"

Confident that one problem was being satisfactorily dealt with, Atillo turned back to attend to the other one. "A blue box, you said."

The Doctor nodded. "Big. Tall. Wooden. Says 'Police'."

Again, the stoic Lieutenant asked no questions and made no comment. He showed no surprise at all that the Doctor should have mislaid a big, tall, blue, wooden police box in the wastelands at the end of the Universe.

Instead, he said flatly, "We're driving out for a last water collection. I'll see what I can do."

Tejana found herself empathising with the man's emotionless military mind-set. She'd been a soldier, she knew how it was. You didn't think, you didn't wonder, you didn't argue. All that did was waste precious time. You just got the job done, whatever it was, the best way you knew how. And from Atillo's actions so far, she was willing to bet he was a very experienced soldier indeed.

"Thank you," she spoke up in relief. "We'd be very grateful".

Without the TARDIS, they had no way of leaving. And of all the places they had ever been, this one would have to be fairly high on the list of places she never wanted to get stranded. They had landed fairly close to the makeshift road with the big tyre tracks they had run down to get here. And in the bleak, black-and-white landscape, the vibrant blue colour of the police box should stand out enough to easily attract the attention of the water collection party. Provided, of course, that the TARDIS allowed herself to be found. She had an impressive array of defence mechanisms she could employ if she found it necessary, from cloaking her presence with a perception filter, to making herself so heavy she couldn't possibly be lifted. They could only hope that the sentient time machine realised that the Lieutenant's party were there to help and not to steal her.

At the sound of Tejana's soft voice, Atillo's gaze swivelled across to her and he looked her up and down, taking in every aspect of her appearance. Although his impassive expression didn't change, she could detect a certain degree of male appreciation lurking below. She wondered if he was married. Her guess would be that he wasn't. He struck her much more as a man who was firmly married to his job.

He gave her a clipped nod and said, "Ma'am," before walking away, apparently leaving them all in the care of the little blonde boy named Creet.

"Come on," the child instructed briskly, heading off down one of the other passageways.

Martha frowned at his back as they followed along behind him. "Sorry, but how old are you?"

Creet gave her an offended look over his shoulder. "Old enough to work!" he snapped. "This way!"

Their small guide led them into a tangled network of corridors. Tejana's suspicions regarding the overcrowded living conditions within the silo were quickly confirmed. The place was a virtual shanty town. Even the passageways were packed full of people, men, women and children, crammed against the walls, fighting for the smallest amount of space. They all looked miserable, filthy, ragged and malnourished, clinging defensively to their meagre possessions, their eyes suspicious and wary of the passing newcomers. The floor was heaped with bedding and makeshift cooking equipment, as well as any number of other miscellaneous items. Some of the people had even stuck photographs to the walls, in a pathetic attempt to make the place a bit more homely. The air was hot and stuffy and the smell was indescribable. Even Jack went a bit pale, while Martha gasped and looked like she wanted to be sick. Tejana merely held her breath and made use of her respiratory bypass system. There were definitely some advantages to being a Time Lord. The Doctor, on the other hand, didn't seem particularly bothered at all, sauntering along and taking everything in with great interest.

Creet was calling out as he walked. His voice was thin and reedy, but his demeanour was not that of a typical ten-year-old child. It was confident and efficient and strangely adult. Like Atillo, he had a job to do and he had no intention of wasting time. "Kistane Shafekane. Kistane Shafekane. Kistane and Beltone Shafekane. I'm looking for a Kistane and Beltone Shafekane."

Scores of faces turned towards them, but none of them showed any recognition of the names. Padrafet looked from person to person, searching for his family, and growing more and more frantic as he encountered stranger after stranger.

"The Shafekanes?" he pleaded. "Anyone?"

Creet marched along still further. "Anyone?" he shouted, raising his voice over the background murmur of people talking. "Kistane and Beltone Shafekane? Anyone know the Shafekane family? Anyone called Shafekane?"

Martha stared around in dismay as they picked their way along the crowded corridor, her instinctive reaction as a medical student one of revulsion at the primitive living conditions. "It's like a refugee camp!"

"Stinking!" Jack agreed, wrinkling his nose.

A large, well-muscled man turned around and gave him an angry glare.

"Oooh, sorry," Jack apologised quickly, hurrying past. "No offence."

"Don't you see, though?" the Doctor exclaimed happily. "It's the ripe old smell of humans! You _survived_! Better than a million years evolving into clouds of gas and then another million as downloads, but you always revert to the same basic shape! The fundamental humans! End of the Universe and here you are. Indomitable!" He squeezed Martha's shoulder with a grin. "That's the word! _Indomitable_! HA!"

Creet had moved further ahead of them now, still patiently calling out, "Is there a Kistane Shafekane?"

All at once, a dark-haired woman stood up and waved to attract his attention. "That's me." Her eyes passed over Creet's head and she saw Padrafet coming down the corridor. "Oh my God!" she gasped, her face lighting up with joy.

"Mother!" he shouted, breaking into a run and throwing himself into her arms. Another man stepped away from the wall and joined the embrace. He was taller and older than Padrafet, but the family resemblance was strong enough to easily confirm that this was his brother. "Beltone!"

Martha looked over at Tejana and smiled, her dark eyes a little moist at the emotional reunion. "It's not all bad news!"

Tejana smiled back as together they watched the little family hugging each other as if they would never let go. It reminded her of her own reunion with the Doctor after the end of the Time War. She pushed the memory away. That had been a joyful occasion, but a painful one too, discovering that all the rest of her people were dead, and she usually preferred not to dwell on it.

Behind them, the Doctor had found a bulkhead door set into the wall, and was fiddling around with his sonic screwdriver trying to open it.

"Come here, will you, Tejana, and help me with this!" he requested. Tejana joined him, looking over his shoulder at the keypad on the wall beside the door. "It's half-deadlocked," he told her. "See if you can overwrite the code."

Obediently, she went to work on the keypad, while the Doctor continued to sonic the corners of the door itself. The codes were extremely straightforward and easy to break. She had the deadlock disengaged in no time at all.

In the background, she could hear Jack chatting up one of the refugees, a good-looking, well-built man in his thirties. "Captain Jack Harkness," he introduced himself, shaking the man vigorously by the hand. "And who are _you_?"

"Stop it!" the Doctor growled at him. "Come and help us with this."

Reluctantly, Jack let the man go and came over to them, rolling his eyes comically at Tejana as he went. A bubble of laughter welled up in her throat. Instead of finding his customary flirtatious routine annoying, she found it reassuring and comforting, more proof that in all the ways that counted, he hadn't changed at all.

Putting his shoulder to the door, he combined his strength with the Doctor's, and together they shoved hard at the bulkhead door, which began to slowly slide open.

"Right, let's find out where we are!" the Doctor exclaimed, stepping forward.

His foot went out into thin air. With a curse, he snatched at the door frame, trying to steady himself. Jack moved like lightning, catching him by the collar and heaving him back to safety, just in time to stop him falling. Yawning at their feet was the biggest rocket silo Tejana had ever seen, stretching up hundreds of metres above them, and at least that many below. Scorching air gusted up through the seemingly endless shaft. Tejana's stomach tightened in horror as she realised her father had almost plummeted directly into it.

"Gotcha!" Jack said, putting the Doctor back on his feet.

"Thanks," the Time Lord replied in a heartfelt voice.

Jack's eyes crinkled teasingly at the corners. "How did you cope without me?"

The Doctor chose not to answer that one, staring curiously across at the vast, white rocket instead.

"Now that's what I call a rocket!" Martha commented in awe.

"They're not refugees, they're passengers," the Doctor nodded.

Tejana took a step backward, away from the vertiginous drop, into the safety of the corridor. "That guard said they were going to Utopia."

The others stepped back with her. "Utopia, the perfect place," the Doctor mused. "One hundred trillion years and it's still the same old dream. Do you recognise those engines?"

Tejana shook her head. "No, I've never seen anything quite like it before."

"Whatever it is, it's not rocket science," Jack joked. "It's hot though."

"Boiling," the Doctor agreed.

They shoved the door closed and Tejana carefully entered the code to reseal it, to make sure nobody else accidentally tumbled through into oblivion.

"But if the Universe is falling apart, what does Utopia _mean_?" she asked.

Before the Doctor could answer, an elderly, white-haired man dressed in an old-fashioned black-waistcoat bustled up to them and shook first Martha and then Tejana by the hand.

"Hello, hello," he greeted them in a vague, preoccupied manner. Then he turned his attention to the two men, looking back and forth questioningly between them. "Doctor?" This last was directed at Jack, who cheerfully shook his head in denial.

"That's me," the Doctor spoke up.

"Good!" the old man exclaimed in delight, seizing him by the arm without explanation and starting to lead him away. "Good. Good. Good. Good."

The Doctor pulled a comical face over his shoulder at his companions as he was hurried up the corridor away from them. "It's good, apparently," he said in a bewildered tone.

Martha raised her eyebrows at Tejana and Jack. "Oh, good!" she echoed dryly, before starting out after the fast-disappearing Doctor, almost trotting to keep pace. Jack grinned and made to follow, before glancing back at Tejana, who was still staring down at the hand the old man had shook, an odd, distant look on her face.

"Sweaty hands?" Jack joked.

She glanced up and blinked at him in a perplexed fashion. "What?"

"The old bloke. Did he have sweaty hands or something?" Jack repeated. "You're looking at your hand in a funny way."

"I...um...no," she answered, curling her fingers awkwardly into the palm of her hand. "I just felt...weird...for a moment, that's all. Some sort of strange de ja vu. Like I'd met him before somewhere."

"And have you?"

"No," she shrugged, falling into step beside him as they followed the others up the corridor. "At least, I don't think so. But it's a big Universe, so anything's possible, I guess."

"I know what you mean," he said sombrely. "Live long enough and it all starts to run together after a while, doesn't it?"

Tejana bit her lip guiltily, forgetting all about the peculiar old man in a wave of renewed sadness at what had happened to Jack. In her timeline, it had only been a couple of years since she had seen him last. But in his, it had been well over a century. She couldn't even begin to imagine how difficult that would have been for a human, even for an immortal like Jack. From her own experience, she knew that having such a long life span could be difficult enough for a Time Lord, even though it was something her people had always been brought up to expect from childhood. As a human, born with such a comparatively short expectation of life, Jack had been forced to learn to cope with his unanticipated immortality from scratch. And he had done it alone, with no-one to help him at all. Again, she couldn't help a stab of incredulous bitterness towards her father.

_How could he have just left Jack like that? Just run away like a coward? How could he ever have been so cruel to someone who had been his friend?_

Wishing she could somehow beg Jack's forgiveness, but not knowing how, she asked softly, "What was it like, Jack? Spending all that time waiting for us?"

He hesitated for a moment, staring straight ahead as he walked, his face unreadable. Then he said in a clipped voice, "Long."

She nodded, realising this was all the answer she was going to get. She was not surprised. Jack had never been particularly forthcoming about his past, even when they had first met, always quick to evade any reference to it with a joke or a tale so tall she could never be sure there was ever any truth in it. She had no problem with that. There were enough sensitive areas in her own past for her to understand his reticence completely. Some things you just didn't talk about. So instead of prying further, she simply asked, "And was it worth it?"

He shot her a sideways look and their eyes met. For a fleeting moment, she saw something very much like tenderness in his gaze, before it vanished into his usual devil-may-care humour.

"Absolutely," he assured her with a wink.

Uncertain what else to say, she returned his smile and they continued to walk on in silence. Up ahead, the old man was talking so rapidly, it appeared the Doctor was struggling to get a word in edgeways. The sight amused Tejana. So often, particularly with this incarnation of her father, the boot was on the other foot, since he generally talked so much that his companions often didn't get much chance to contribute to the conversation. It was actually quite funny to see him getting a taste of his own medicine.

Then Jack said casually, "So...Rose is living in a parallel Universe, huh? How about that?"

"Yeah, how about that?" Tejana replied, with a small, soundless sigh. Like Martha, she was more than a little tired of discussing Rose. Jack had always known that she and Rose didn't necessarily get on, despite their determined attempts to remain civil. And the truth was, for her own sake, she was glad that the other woman was gone. It was as though the air in the TARDIS was suddenly breathable again, as though a terrible constriction had been released. But for the Doctor's sake, she could never be glad. The loss of Rose still ate away at him every day, even though he did his best not to show it.

"How'd he take it?" Jack inclined his head towards the Doctor's back.

Tejana shrugged. "Badly."

"He still misses her?"

"Very much."

"And Martha?" he queried. "Are the two of them...?"

Tejana quickly shook her head. "No. I think she'd like to, but he..." Her voice trailed away.

"Ah," Jack nodded wisely. "Complicated."

"Yeah," she agreed. "Complicated."

To her surprise, he reached out and took her hand. "And you?" he asked, his voice suddenly husky. "How have you been?"

"I..." she began, before hesitating, a little unsettled by the intimate sensation of his fingers curling around hers. _I missed you, Jack. _It seemed like such a long time since someone had touched her like this. Probably not since the last time she had seen him, actually. She couldn't help wondering how many people he'd been with in the last hundred years. With Jack being Jack, she thought she probably didn't want to know. "I'm fine," she continued, proud of the way her voice came out sounding so cool and collected. "Same old, same old. You know how it is."

"Yeah," Jack said softly, a warm, teasing light in his ocean-blue eyes. "I think I probably do."

Tejana wasn't quite sure what he meant by that and she wasn't about to ask. But he didn't let go of her hand as they continued to walk, and she didn't pull away. Despite the strangeness of what he now was, it felt good - secure and comforting and right. She felt both her hearts give a little skip of unaccustomed happiness. Having Jack so unexpectedly back in her life was like suddenly seeing sunshine on a grey winter's day.

Whatever relationship ended up developing between them in the future, she wasn't going to spoil the here and now by worrying about it.


	6. Chapter 6

_**Author's Note: Thanks to my lovely reviewers - TheWickedHeart, MayFairy, EDZEL2 (x 3), Celestial Valkyrie, silentnight and SawManiac211.**_

_**To silentnight - Yep, here are those bits, just for you ;) Hope you enjoy!  
**_

* * *

- **CHAPTER SIX** -

The elderly professor led them through the hot, crowded corridors until they reached the entrance to what appeared to be some sort of crudely set up laboratory.

A blue-skinned woman with insectoid features hovered near the doorway. She was dressed in a white lab coat and seemed to have been expecting them.

"Chan-welcome-tho," she said brightly, as the Professor charged eagerly past her, dragging the Doctor with him, not giving the Time Lord a chance to answer.

"This is the gravitissimal accelerator," he gabbled, indicating some of the equipment against the wall. "It's part of the..."

The woman's face fell as he continued with a stream of technical explanations, without even acknowledging her presence. She turned back to Tejana, Martha and Jack with a shy smile. "Chan-welcome-tho," she repeated, giving them a little bow.

Tejana inclined her head gracefully, replicating the formal greeting. "Hello."

Although she had come across several bi-pedal insectoid species in her travels, she was unfamiliar with this particular one. She got the impression the woman was quite young, with a long, contoured head and mottled, chitinous skin. Long, thin antennae protruded from her high forehead, and she had a pair of serrated appendages on either side of her human-like mouth, very like mandibles, which twitched as she talked.

Martha stared at the smiling woman in fascination. Despite the fact she had been travelling in the TARDIS for quite a while now, the novelty of meeting different alien species still hadn't worn off for her. "Hello," she said. "Who are you?"

"Chan-Chantho-tho," the woman replied.

In the background, the Professor was still towing the Doctor around the room, talking up a storm as he went. "And over here is the footprint impellor system. If you know anything about end-time gravity..."

"Ah, well, a little bit..." the Doctor murmured, pulling out his black-framed spectacles and putting them on, before carefully inspecting the instrument consoles in front of him.

"But we can't get it to _harmonise_!" the Professor told him despairingly.

Meanwhile, Jack was giving the blue-skinned woman a warm grin. "Captain Jack Harkness," he introduced himself. He still had Tejana's fingers firmly entwined in his left hand, so he shook the woman's hand with his right one.

The Doctor glanced up with a frown, which only deepened when he saw his daughter's hand held in Jack's. "Stop it!" he said crossly.

Tejana was left wondering whether he was talking about the Captain's constant flirting with everyone he met, or if he was referring to her physical contact with Jack. Her soft lips tightened dangerously and she returned his annoyed look with a defiant glare. He could just forget the protective father act. If she wanted to hold hands with Jack, then she would. And if she wanted to do anything _else_ with Jack, then she would do that too. It was none of the Doctor's business. He'd already caused enough harm with his lies, so as far as she was concerned, he could just back off, and let her run her own life for once.

"Can't I say hello to _anyone_?" Jack demanded good-naturedly, doing his best to lighten the suddenly tense atmosphere between father and daughter.

The blue-skinned woman simpered and giggled, her eyes fixed admiringly on his face. If her complexion had allowed it, Tejana felt sure she would have blushed. Jack tended to have that effect on women, no matter who they were or where they came from.

"Chan - I do not protest - tho."

Accustomed to the strength of his own charm, Jack gave her a teasing wink. "Maybe later, Blue." He strode forward into the room, pulling Tejana with him, keeping her proprietorially close to his side, almost as if they were a couple. "So what have we got here?"

Tejana ignored her father's disapproval and allowed Jack to usher her towards a small sitting area to the side of the room. It was an oddly pleasant feeling, being half of a pair again. Even if it was only just for this particular moment, even if it was just Jack being his usual flirtatious self, it still brought home to her just how lonely she had been lately.

Still frowning, the Doctor returned his attention to what the Professor was saying. "So all of this feeds into the rocket?" he queried, examining the multitude of heavy cables that snaked from the equipment up into the ceiling.

The Professor tilted his head up as well, his expression one of extreme frustration. "Yeah, except without a stable footprint we'll never achieve escape velocity. If only we could harmonise the five impact patterns and unify them...well, then we might yet make it. What do you think, Doctor?"

"Well...um...basically," the Doctor said thoughtfully, before finishing with an apologetic, "Basically, I haven't a clue!"

The Professor's face clouded over in acute disappointment. "Nothing?"

"I'm not from around these parts," the Doctor admitted. "I've never seen anything like it."

Just then, the pack on Jack's back unexpectedly made a peculiar bubbling sound. Tejana glanced at it curiously. It was big and very bulky, which was a surprise in itself. Back when she had known him before, Jack had always travelled very lightly. Carting around a lot of luggage hadn't been exactly practical for an intergalactic conman. It probably wasn't any of her concern, but she couldn't help wondering what on Gallifrey he had in there that was important enough to lug all the way to the end of the Universe.

The pack bubbled again, louder this time, as if it was trying to make itself heard.

"Jack..." she began.

He gave her an impish grin, clearly guessing what she was about to ask. Bringing her hand up to his lips in an old-fashioned courtly gesture, he gave it a quick, cheeky kiss, his lips warm and intimate against her skin. Then he released her and heaved the straps of his pack off his shoulders, swinging it on to a nearby chair. Judging by his grunt of relief, it was obviously very heavy. But before she could satisfy her curiosity by actually asking him what was in it, she was distracted by the Doctor calling to her.

"Tejana? Any ideas?"

"What?" Her eyebrows raised fractionally. The Doctor must really be stumped. It wasn't often that he asked her opinion on an engineering problem, especially since he knew it wasn't at all her forte. Psychic stuff, yes. Engineering stuff, not so much. "Oh...right..."

Temporarily forgetting about the mystery of Jack's bubbling bag, she moved over to where her father and the Professor were standing, her gaze running assessingly over the various technologies they had been discussing. It was obviously an exceedingly complex launch-system for the enormous rocket they had seen in the silo, but none of the actual components were familiar to her. However, from what she could see, it had been ingeniously put together, in a rough and ready sort of way. It was as if the overarching brilliance of the idea hadn't been able to be achieved with the parts available, so the Professor had been forced to make do with what he had. In some ways it reminded her of the TARDIS console, where many of the Gallifreyan instruments had long ago ceased to function and had gradually been replaced by the Doctor with whatever he had to hand, including some very odd items borrowed from Earth, such as an old-fashioned typewriter.

The Professor's face lit up again in renewed hope. "Are you a scientist too, young lady?"

"Of a sort," she replied, glancing at him. "When it suits me."

"This is Tejana," the Doctor said. "She's my daughter."

"Your daughter?" The Professor looked a bit taken aback, presumably because the Doctor didn't look old enough to have a daughter Tejana's apparent age. Tejana was a little surprised as well – the Doctor didn't usually specify their relationship when he first introduced her, for that very reason. She wondered why he had chosen to do so this time.

"Yes, that's right," she confirmed lightly. "But please don't hold that against me."

The sudden intensity of the Professor's gaze made her feel uncomfortable. His bright blue eyes seemed to see right through hers, into the back of her head. Again, she felt that inexplicable, fleeting sense of familiarity. Trying not to be too obvious about it, she studied his face closely. It was kind and gentle, and a little vague, as if the Professor spent too much time buried in his work and not enough time interacting with other people. Not enough time resting, either, going by the pronounced bags under his eyes. At a guess, she would have said he was around seventy years old. His hair was snow-white and his face was lined, but there was still some evidence that he had been a handsome man in his day.

She racked her brains as hard as she could, trying to think where she might have come across him before, but with no positive result. Nevertheless, the uncanny feeling that she should know him continued to persist. It bothered her. The old man seemed harmless enough. But long, hard experience had taught Tejana that sometimes things could be very different to what they seemed. For a moment, she thought of mentioning it to the Doctor, but then she dismissed the idea. Instead, even though she knew it was absolutely wrong, she made a snap decision and reached out with her mind, subtly probing the Professor's with a touch so delicate he didn't even know it was there. The Doctor, however, sensed the flexing of her psychic ability and he shot her a sharp, reprimanding look. She withdrew her mind immediately. She needn't have troubled anyway, there was nothing to find. The Professor's consciousness was wide open and he was exactly what he purported to be – an elderly human who had devoted much of his life to helping others wherever he could with his scientific knowledge. No dark secrets, no hidden agenda, nothing to justify her uncharacteristic invasion of his privacy.

_What the hell was that all about? _the Doctor inquired silently.

_Nothing, _she responded. _Nothing at all. I'm just getting too suspicious in my old age, that's all._

Thoroughly ashamed of her unfounded concern, she gave the elderly man a rueful, charming smile. "In this case, I have to agree with my father, though," she said. "It all looks amazing, but I've never seen anything quite like it either. I'm very sorry."

The Professor sighed. "No, no, my dear. I'm the one that's sorry. It's my fault. There's just been so little help."

A sudden shriek behind them made them all jump. Turning, they saw Martha pulling something out of Jack's bag. Tejana recognised the object as a sophisticated hydrostatic pressure tank, filled with a clear, viscous preserving fluid. The bubbling noise she had heard earlier had evidently been the clathrate-forming gases used to maintain the molecular structure of the biological tissue contained in the tank. Biological tissue which from where she was standing looked remarkably like a severed hand.

"Oh...my...God!" Martha said in a shaking voice, her eyes focused accusingly on Jack. "You've got a hand. A hand in a jar. A hand in a jar in your bag!"

She set the tank on the low table with a thump which made Tejana flinch. Cryostasis was a fairly delicate process. Hydrostatic pressure tanks weren't built to be handled so roughly, let alone stuffed into a back pack and flown unprotected through the Time Vortex. No wonder it was bubbling like an overheated cauldron.

The Doctor walked across to the table. "That's...that's my hand!"

He sat down abruptly on the nearest chair, staring at the gruesome artefact inside the tank as if he couldn't believe his eyes. The tank bubbled furiously again, as though the hand was reacting to the presence of its previous owner, the wiggling fingers almost seeming to wave at the Doctor.

Shocked, Tejana looked to the Captain for an explanation. "Jack?"

He slouched against the wall, his expression entirely unrepentant. "I told you I had a Doctor detector," he shrugged.

Bewildered, the Professor and Chantho hovered nearby, observing the small drama with interest.

"Chan – is this a tradition among your people – tho?" the blue-skinned woman asked. She had a very odd way of speaking, Tejana noticed distractedly, prefacing every sentence with the first syllable of her name and concluding with the second. Until you got used to it, you had to really concentrate to follow what she was saying.

"Not on _my _street!" Martha said indignantly. She gave the Doctor a hard look. "What d'you mean, that's your hand? You've got both your hands, I can see them!"

"Long story," the Doctor replied. "I lost my hand. Christmas Day, in a sword-fight."

"_What?_ And you grew another one?"

"Um, yeah. Yeah, I did." The Doctor twinkled his fingers of his right hand at her. "Hello."

"Forgive me for asking, but what species are you?" the Professor interjected.

"Time Lord," the Doctor responded. "Last of, Tejana and I. There's just the two of us left now. Heard of them?"

The Professor's face was completely blank, with no trace of recognition whatsoever. The Doctor gave him an incredulous look.

"Legend or anything?" he persisted. "Not even a myth?"

The Professor shook his head and gave an apologetic shrug.

"Blimey!" the Doctor exclaimed to Tejana, a bit huffily, slumping back in his chair and putting his trainers up on the table. "End of the Universe is a bit humbling, isn't it?"

Tejana couldn't help laughing. "Well, not everybody's ego is as massive as yours, you know, father dear."

"True," he agreed complacently. "But not everybody is as brilliant as me, either."

"Chan – it is said that I am the last of my species too – tho," the blue-skinned woman spoke up shyly.

"Sorry, what was your name?" the Doctor asked, sitting forward again.

"My assistant...and good friend...Chantho," the Professor answered on her behalf. "A survivor of the Malmooth. This was their planet, Malcassairo, before we took refuge."

The light of understanding dawned in the Doctor's eyes. "That city out there...that was yours?"

Chanto lowered her eyes and her antennae drooped. "Chan – the conglomeration died – tho."

"Conglomeration!" the Doctor chortled, slapping his knee, delighted at his earlier guess being proven right. "That's what I said!"

Tejana and Jack exchanged a look over his head, both of them embarrassed at his insensitivity. While being one of the Doctor's generally more social regenerations, this particular incarnation could also be incredibly thoughtless and rude. Even worse, most of the time he didn't even know he was doing it.

"You're supposed to say you're sorry!" Jack corrected him in an undertone.

The Time Lord looked a little startled, as he suddenly realised that, yet again, he had inadvertently been utterly tactless. "Oh. Yes. Sorry!"

"Chan – most grateful – tho," Chantho murmured.

"You _grew...another...hand_?" Martha said, still staring disbelievingly at the Doctor. She appeared to have missed the latter half of the conversation and was still fixated on the whole "hand in a jar" issue. Not that Tejana could blame her. Even though Martha was a medical student, and therefore extremely intelligent, relatively speaking, the intricate ins-and-outs of post-regenerative Time Lord biology would probably be beyond most humans.

Patiently, the Doctor waved at her again with his regrown hand. "Hello again!" Then, as she still looked uncertain, he got to his feet and crossed over to her. "It's fine. Look!" He took her hand in his and shook it. "Really, it's me!"

She gave a nervous laugh. "All this time and you're still full of surprises."

He retrieved his hand and gave her a broad grin and a wink.

"Chan – you are most unusual – tho," Chantho said.

"Well..." the Doctor murmured, trying to look modest, but failing miserably.

Jack turned his attention to the Professor. "So what about those things outside? The Beastie Boys? What are they?"

"We call them the Futurekind. Which is a myth in itself. But it's feared they are what we will become, unless we reach Utopia."

"And Utopia is...?" Tejana queried.

The Professor looked at her in open astonishment. "Oh, every human knows of Utopia. Where have you _been_?"

Tejana was about to haughtily remind him that she was a Time Lord and not human, thank you very much, when the Doctor cut across her. "She's a bit of a hermit."

"A hermit..." the Professor said sceptically. "With a father..." He glanced over at Jack and Martha. "And friends..."

"Hermits United. We meet up every ten years. Swap stories about caves," the Doctor rambled, making it up as he went along.

Tejana smiled and nodded brightly, as if she knew exactly what he was talking about, even though it had to be one of the lamest cover stories she'd ever heard in her long life. "It's great fun..." she agreed. "For a hermit. So...um...Utopia?"

The Professor crooked his finger and beckoned them over to one of the computer terminals.


	7. Chapter 7

_**Author's Note:**_

_**Hello there - still having major writer's block on "Falling Out Of The World", so I thought I'd slip in another chapter of this one instead.  
**_

_**Thanks very much to everyone who reviewed since last time: GuesssWho, MayFairy, Theta'sWorstNightmare (x 2), Celestial Valkyrie, EDZEL2, silentnight, TheWickedHeart, sailormajinmoon (x 3), MountainLord-92 (x 2), Son of Whitebeard (x 2) and Marzipan.  
**_

_**To silentnight: Yeah, Jack always seems to get the pointy end of the stick, doesn't he? Especially in my stories, poor bloke. Thanks for the review, glad you are still enjoying :)  
**_

_**To marzipan: Hey there, thanks so much for this review and for all the others you have given on my various stories, it's so great to have you aboard. I'm very happy that you like Tejana, and even happier that you like the Master X)  
**_

_**Au revoir to you all for now and happy reading!  
**_

* * *

- **CHAPTER SEVEN** -

"The call came from across the stars, over and over again: 'Come to Utopia!'" Professor Yana explained, pointing at a navigational chart displayed on the screen. A red dot throbbed constantly, on-off, on-off, pulsing in a hypnotising rhythm, like a beating heart. "It originated from that point."

Tejana stared at it. Navigation was one of her specialities, but there was nothing on the chart she recognised. It wasn't anywhere she'd ever travelled before. She shot an inquiring look at Jack, who shrugged, equally at a loss.

The Doctor pushed closer, squinting through his glasses. "Where is that?"

"Oh, it's far beyond the Condensate Wilderness. Out towards the Wildlands and the Dark Matter Reefs," the Professor said.

"But there's nothing out that far," Tejana frowned, suddenly understanding why the chart seemed so strange to her. "There never has been. No living creature should be able to survive that close to the gravitational singularities generated by those Reefs."

"In theory, maybe not, my dear," the Professor said with a wry smile. "But as you can see, there's something out there. Something that's calling us in – the last of the humans, scattered across the night."

The Doctor gave him a keen, assessing look. "What do you think it is?"

"I don't know," Yana admitted. "A colony? A city? Some sort of haven? The Science Foundation created the Utopia Project thousands of years ago to preserve mankind – to find a way of surviving beyond the collapse of reality itself. Perhaps they found it. Perhaps not." His faded blue eyes twinkled mischievously. "But it's worth a look, don't you think?"

The Doctor grinned, his face alight with interest. "Oh yes!" He tapped the screen with his finger. "And look, Tejana...the signal keeps modulating, so it's not automatic. That's a good sign that there's someone out there."

She hunched down beside him and the two Time Lords studied the screen together, while Jack and Martha peered over their shoulders.

"Mmmm..." Tejana agreed reluctantly, finding herself gradually infected by her father's bubbling enthusiasm, as always. "And is that a navigational matrix? If they use that, they can fly without the stars to guide them. They'll need that if they intend to find their way past the Dark Matter Reefs."

"Assuming they've got someone who knows how to use it," the Doctor nodded. "Professor?"

There was no response. Glancing up, they saw that the Professor had his eyes tightly shut, his face ashen and contorted with pain.

"Professor!" the Doctor repeated in concern.

The elderly man's eyes flicked open again. His expression was dazed, as if he had just awakened from a trance.

"I..." he began hesitantly. Then his face hardened. "Right, that's enough talk! There's work to do. Now, if you could leave, thank you!"

Turning his back on them, he straightened his waistcoat and walked away. Tejana stared after him, a small shiver creeping up the back of her neck. There had been something...cold...about his voice. Something completely at odds with the genial way he had spoken to them before. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a worried look cross Chantho's face, as if these abrupt mood swings had happened before. For a moment, she wondered if maybe he wasn't quite sane. She hated to think how many different psychoses could be brought on by living in a bleak, primitive place like this, with so many people relying on him for their salvation. The mental pressure had to be unimaginable, especially for a man of his age.

"Are you all right, Professor?" she asked.

"Yes, I'm fine!" he snapped, without turning around. Picking up the boost reversal circuit attached to one of the consoles, he pretended to adjust it, as if he was hoping they would all just go away and leave him alone. "And busy!"

"Except...that rocket's not going to fly, is it?" the Doctor interjected. "This footprint mechanism thing...it's not working."

The old man whirled angrily back to face them. "We'll find a way!" he insisted fiercely.

But the Doctor shook his head. "You're stuck on this planet. And you haven't told them, have you? That lot out there? They still think they're going to fly!"

At his words, all the fire drained out of the Professor's face, leaving behind nothing but a tired, defeated old man. He sank down on to a nearby stool, as if his legs were suddenly too weary to hold him. "Well..." he murmured, looking sadly at the circuit in his hand. "It's better to let them live in hope."

"Quite right too!" the Doctor said, pulling off his coat and tossing it to Tejana. Well-used to her father's penchant for drama, she caught it deftly and hung it over her arm, waiting to see what rabbit he intended to pull out of the hat this time. "And I must say, Professor...what was it?"

"Yana."

"Professor Yana." He walked around the console and took the circuit gently out of the old man's hand. "This new science is well beyond me. But all the same, a boost reversal circuit, in any time-frame, must be a circuit that reverses the boost. So...I wonder what would happen if I did this?"

There was a familiar buzzing sound as he applied the sonic screwdriver to the circuit. Suddenly, all the systems powered up simultaneously with a low, rumbling whoosh, and the control panel in front of Yana lit up like a Christmas tree. Tejana and Martha exchanged an excited high five; while, standing behind them, Jack gave a wild, triumphant whoop and took the opportunity to hug them both.

"Chan – it's working – tho," Chantho cried joyfully, gazing around her in bewilderment.

Yana was so astonished he looked as if the Doctor had just slapped him in the face with a dead fish. "But... how did you _do_ that?"

The Doctor was trying not to look too pleased with himself, but he wasn't succeeding very well. "Sorry, I thought I said...I'm brilliant!"

After that, everything descended into a blur of industry and excitement. Taking charge, the Doctor assigned each of them a task, as the small group hurried to get the rocket ready for immediate departure. Tejana found herself at one of the computer terminals, attempting to refine the navigational matrix. Jack stood beside her, running impulse scans on the main drive control systems, occasionally substituting defective circuit boards with the ones the Doctor tossed him from across the room. Chantho and Martha were despatched to fetch some mono-crystal operational amplifiers from a store room elsewhere in the complex. The Doctor and the Professor were poring over the large, transparent neutralino map in the centre of the room, double-checking the complex tangle of cords that connected it to the footprint impellor system.

In the background, Atillo's voice echoed over the tannoy, broadcasting throughout the entire complex: "All passengers prepare for immediate boarding. I repeat, all passengers prepare for immediate boarding. Destination: Utopia!"

Tejana typed rapidly, the different co-ordinates clicking through her brain as she plotted the correct course to guide the rocket safely through the dangerous shoals of the Dark Matter Reefs.

"So," Jack said softly, slotting in another circuit board. "What are you doing after this?"

Tejana laughed. His voice was completely casual, as if they were just finishing up some sort of mundane task on Earth, rather than trying to save the last of humanity from oblivion at the very end of the Universe.

"Oh, I don't know. Grab a bite to eat at a local restaurant," she joked. "Maybe catch a movie, that sort of thing..."

He smiled at her, giving her the full benefit of his flirtatious charm. "Sounds great. Want some company?"

She kept her eyes fixed on the screen in front of her, trying to ignore the faint colour creeping into her cheeks. "Depends who it is."

"Well, as the only eligible male in the room, I was kinda hoping it would be me," Jack said.

"Heads up, Jack!" the Doctor called, sending another circuit board spinning through the air from across the room. Jack caught it effortlessly and inserted it into the console.

"Don't get too cocky, Captain. You're not the only eligible male in the room," Tejana teased. "There's always the Professor."

She glanced back over her shoulder at the elderly man, absorbed in an animated technical discussion with her father. As if feeling the weight of her gaze, he glanced up and their eyes met. Immediately, the laughter seemed to drain out of her and the light-hearted joke no longer seemed so funny. All at once, she could hear her own double heartbeat pulsing steadily in her ears. Then Yana smiled at her, his expression placid and his blue eyes gentle. With an effort, she pulled her gaze back to her terminal.

"That guy really bothers you, doesn't he?" Jack asked.

"Yeah," she answered shortly, her good mood inexplicably lost. "I just wish I knew why."

"The Doctor seems to think he's some kind of genius and saint and hero, all rolled into one."

"The Doctor likes to see the best in everyone he meets. He believes in giving everyone a chance, no matter who they are," she snapped. "You should know that better than most!"

Jack's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Ouch, that stung!" he teased. "Looks like my little kitten has grown some claws while I've been away!"

Tejana flushed at the mock hurt in his voice, immediately regretting her pointed reference to the life of crime he had led before he had joined the TARDIS crew for the first time, trolling the galaxies for likely cons he could pull off. She stared unseeingly at the data screen in front of her, wondering what the hell was wrong with her. She had no idea why she was sniping at Jack. After finally finding him again after so long, the last thing in the Universe she wanted to do was to start quarrelling with him. But something about Professor Yana just seemed to set her on edge.

Then again, maybe it had nothing to do with the Professor. Maybe it was just that Jack had more or less asked her out on a date and she wasn't too sure what to make of that. Wasn't too sure what she _wanted_ to make of it – if anything. Her own uncertainty and vulnerability annoyed her. Even if it was a long time since she'd been intimate with anyone, she was far too old to start acting like a teenager all over again, especially over an inveterate flirt like Captain Jack Harkness.

"I'm nobody's 'little kitten', Jack," she responded curtly, returning to her calculations. "Not even yours."

* * *

Over on the other side of the room, the Doctor's admiration for the Professor's work was growing every minute. Perching his glasses on the very end of his nose, he studied one of the data cords more closely, giving it an exploratory sniff.

"Is this...?"

Peering at him through the transparent parity board, the Professor nodded. "Yes, gluten extract. Binds the neutralino map together."

"But that's _food_!" the Doctor exclaimed in amazement, whipping his glasses off and shoving them back in his pocket. "You've built this entire system out of food and string and staples. Professor Yana...you're a genius!"

The Professor gave a sceptical snort. "Says the man who made it work!"

"Oh, it's easy coming in at the end!" As he spoke, the Doctor inserted several red-banded eigenvector plugs into the board. "But...you're stellar! This is...this is magnificent. And I don't often say that, because...well, because I'm me!"

"Even my title's an affectation..." Yana replied, carefully placing the corresponding plugs on his own side. "There hasn't been a university for...oh, over a thousand years. I've spent my life going from one refugee ship to another."

The Doctor looked at him earnestly. "If you'd been born in a different time, you'd be revered." Yana gave a modest, self-deprecating chuckle. But the Doctor simply continued, "No, I mean it! Throughout the galaxies!"

"Those damn galaxies!" Yana smiled. "They had to go and collapse. Some admiration would have been nice. Just a little. Just once."

"Well, you've got it now," the Doctor assured him. Then his hands stilled and he gave the Professor a searching glance, his brown eyes solemn. "But that footprint engine thing. You can't activate that from on board. It's gotta be from here. You're staying behind."

Yana didn't even bother to try and deny it. "With Chantho," he confirmed. "She won't leave without me. Simply refuses!"

"You would give your life so that they can fly?" the Doctor asked quietly.

The Professor merely shrugged, as if such a sacrifice was not such a big deal. "Oh, I think I'm a little too old for Utopia," he said. "Time I had some sleep."

Before the Doctor could reply, the door slid open and Martha and Chantho reappeared, their arms laden with the components he had requested. It was obvious they had formed an instant friendship, since they were giggling together like a couple of schoolgirls.

"Over here!" Jack called. "You two can help me connect those amplifiers into the drive spar – the same as the last lot. Only_ quicker_!"

"Yes, Sir!" Martha said, giving him a cheeky salute as she moved to obey. Following in her wake, Chantho put her hand over her mouth and giggled even harder.

The Doctor was about to hurry over to supervise what they were doing, when he noticed that Professor was swaying on his feet, his hands up to his head, as if he was about to pass out. Quickly, he dragged a chair over and settled the elderly man into it before he collapsed.

"Chan – Professor, are you all right – tho?" his assistant asked anxiously, all hilarity forgotten as she rushed to his side.

The Professor waved her away irritably. "Yes, yes, I'm fine." Then, as she continued to hover, he said more strongly, "I'm _fine_! Stop fussing and get on with it!"

Reluctantly, she headed back across the room towards Jack and Martha, still shooting worried glances at him over her shoulder.

The Doctor crouched down beside him. "You don't have to keep working. We can handle it."

"It's just a headache," Yana sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "Just...just noise, inside my head, Doctor. Constant _noise_ inside my head."

"What sort of noise?"

"It's the sound of drums. More and more, as though they're getting closer and closer."

The Doctor tensed, his stomach suddenly twisting into a hard knot as a painful memory he had fought hard to forget seared across his brain.

_I can't stand it, Theta, the constant noise inside my head...the constant drumming..._

For just a few seconds, everything in the room seemed to retreat to a distance, like a tide ebbing out from under his feet.

"When did it start?" he heard himself asking, his voice sounding strange and far away in his own ears.

"Oh, I've had it all my life, every waking hour," Yana replied. "It never gives me any _peace_. Still...no rest for the wicked."

And, steadying himself on the nearest console, the elderly professor climbed wearily to his feet and walked back over to the neutrino map.

Numbly, the Doctor watched him go. _No rest for the wicked. No rest for the wicked. _The words seemed to mock his memories, as if the Universe was playing some sort of snide little joke. It was just a stupid coincidence, that was all. The sort of ridiculous coincidence that happened every day.

Reaching out through the psychic link, he touched his daughter's mind. _Tejana?_

_Yes? _she responded, not missing a beat in her typing.

_When you tried to read Professor Yana's mind earlier...he was human, wasn't he? Completely, utterly and totally human, right?_

_Yes, of course. Why?_

He hesitated a moment, before answering, _Because he's not the first person ever to tell me he hears drums in his head._

This time, she stopped what she was doing and looked around at him. He could feel the tang of her curiosity flooding through the link.

_What do you mean? Who else told you that?_

But all at once, he knew he didn't want to talk about it. He had never told Tejana about any of it before, and it seemed silly to start now. It was in the past, over and done with. There was no point raking it all up again over a pointless coincidence. Forcefully, he pushed the memories out of his mind, just as he had done so many times before.

_Doesn't matter. It was ages ago...lifetimes...it can't possibly be connected to here and now._

Tejana frowned, clearly unwilling to let the subject drop. _Doctor..._

Before she could complete her sentence, static crackled across the tannoy system. "Professor, tell the Doctor we found his blue box!"

"Ah!" the Doctor cried, jumping excitedly to his feet, welcoming the unexpected diversion.

The picture on the large security monitor in front of Jack and Tejana flickered madly and then steadied, showing an image of the TARDIS, safely ensconced within the silo.

"Oh, am I glad to see that thing!" Martha said in a heartfelt voice.

The Doctor put his hand on Yana's shoulder. "Professor, it's a wild stab in the dark, but I just may have found you a way out."


	8. Chapter 8

**_Author's Note: _**

**_ Hello, hello, I'm back again. Thanks very much to the following lovely folks for reviewing, you keep me writing even when I don't much feel like it: MountainLord-92, MayFairy, sailormajinmoon, silentnight, EDZEL2, SawManiac211, Son of Whitebeard, Theta'sWorstNightmare and Celestial Valkyrie. _  
**

**_To silentnight: Hey there, thanks for your review! I've currently written about 5,000 words on the next chapter of "Falling Out Of The World", so hopefully it isn't too far away. In regard to your question about that story, it's not just that the Doctor doesn't remember Tejana, it's the fact that she has been completely erased from time by falling into the crack and has, in fact, never existed - which is why her mental connection to the Doctor also no longer exists. Hope that answers your question :) Cheers!  
_**

* * *

**- Chapter Eight -**

Tejana was just putting the finishing touches on the navigational matrix as Atillo's men delivered the TARDIS safely to the laboratory. To her deep relief, the time machine appeared to be undamaged. Evidently, the Futurekind had no interest in anything that wasn't edible.

The Doctor requested the ship to be placed in a corner close to the control consoles. In no time at all, he had the door wide open, with a high-voltage power cable snaking from an outlet in the TARDIS floor, leading out to the footprint impellor system.

"Extra power!" he said cheerfully. "A little bit of a cheat, but who's counting? Jack, you're in charge of the retro-feeds."

Just then, the communications screen fizzed into life. "Professor!" As the static cleared, an image of Atillo's anxious face swam into view. "Professor! Are you getting me?"

Yana hurried over and sat down in front of the screen, pressing a button on the control panel. "I'm here! We're ready! Now all you need to do is to connect the couplings and then we can launch!" But before Atillo could reply, the picture on the screen winked out again and the Professor hissed in exasperation. "For God's sake, this _equipment_! It needs rebooting all the time!"

Martha came across to him. "Is there anything I can do? I've finished that lot."

"If you could," Yana replied gratefully, standing to allow her to take his seat. "Just press the reboot key every time the picture goes out."

Martha smiled and poked at the required button. "Certainly, sir! Just don't ask me to do shorthand."

Immediately, Atillo's face popped back up again. "Are you still there?"

"Ah!" Yana said in relief, patting Martha on the shoulder. "All present and correct. Send your man inside. We'll keep the levels down from here."

On the screen, Atillo stepped back, and they could see him sliding open a heavy metal door to allow a man in a hazmat suit to pass through it. As soon as he was inside, the Lieutenant slammed the door shut as quickly as he could, looking in at the man through an observation window.

"He's inside," he confirmed over the microphone. "And good luck to him!"

Yana rushed over to Jack's workstation. "Captain, keep the levels below the red," he instructed, pointing at a series of dials. Jack nodded in acknowledgement, his hands steady on the controls.

The Doctor put his glasses back on and focused curiously on the communication monitor, where the man in the hazmat suit could be seen bending over one of five cylindrical devices. "Where is that room?"

"It's underneath the rocket," Yana said. "Fix the couplings and the footprint can work. _But_...the entire chamber is flooded with stet radiation."

He crossed back to stand behind Martha, with the Doctor following behind him.

"_Stet?_ I've never heard of it!"

"You wouldn't want to. But it's safe enough. We can hold the radiation back from here."

The man on the screen quickly tapped a security code into the number pad on top of the first coupling. With a hiss, the lid opened, revealing a sickly green glow inside. Carefully, he inserted his gloved hand inside, grabbing the handle of the cylinder, twisting and raising it at the same time, before dropping it back smoothly into place.

As he moved on to the second coupling, an alarm began to wail loudly.

"Radiation rising!" Yana exclaimed in dismay. "Nought point two!"

Caught up in the drama on the screen, Jack's attention had wavered for a fraction of a second, allowing the radiation gauge to momentarily rise into the red zone. Instantly, Tejana's hand flashed out and steadied his, easing the dial back until the indicator fell back into the safe zone.

"Keep it _level_!" Yana snapped at Jack.

"Yes, sir!" Jack responded apologetically, giving Tejana a rueful look.

She smiled at him and gave his hand a gentle, conspiratorial squeeze, before returning to her own work. The navigational matrix was now complete, the coordinates as perfect as she could make them. If the refugees couldn't get past the Dark Matter Reefs on the course she had plotted, then they wouldn't get past at all. With a few quick keystrokes, she uploaded it to the rocket's automatic navigation system.

She had no sooner completed the transfer when all hell broke loose. The entire room shuddered and another alarm began going off, even louder than the first one. Glancing across at Jack, she swiftly ascertained that the problem had nothing to do with the radiation gauge. Something else was happening, something serious.

"Chan – we're losing power – tho!" Chantho cried.

The Professor frantically worked the controls on the console in front of him. "It's external!" he said. "There's a malfunction in Sector Five!"

The Doctor joined him, flipping buttons in quick succession, trying his best to stabilise the erratic system. But the console had overloaded and was no longer responding.

"Radiation's rising!" he shouted to Jack.

"We've lost control!" Jack yelled back, as another shudder shook the room. "The power keeps surging. If it keeps up, the whole thing will blow!"

Checking that her sonic screwdriver was in her back pocket, Tejana ran across to the Professor. "I'll go!" she said urgently. "Quick, show me where Sector Five is!"

A schematic of the silo layout flashed up on the screen. "It's here!" Yana said, pointing to the map. "There's a service area with a series of junction boxes! But you must hurry – the chamber's going to flood!"

Looking at the location he was indicating, Tejana realised that it wasn't far from where they had discovered the Shafekane family earlier. Leaping towards the door, she began to run as fast as she could.

Behind her, as the door slid closed, she heard the Doctor cry out, "Jack! Override the vents!"

She began to run even faster. The Doctor and Jack might be able to temporarily hold back disaster, but she knew they were fighting a losing battle. As the Doctor had said, the entire launch system was constructed from food and string and staples. Despite the undoubted genius of the Professor's concept, it had to be incredibly fragile, with very little holding it together. It couldn't take this sort of punishment. Whatever had gone wrong, whatever the malfunction was, their only chance was for her to find and repair it as soon as possible.

All the refugees had boarded the rocket and the corridors of the silo were strangely empty now, dimly lit only by the emergency generators. The passengers had only been permitted to take their most essential possessions, to conserve space on the rocket, so many of their things had been left behind, still littering the passageways where they had lived crammed together for so long. As she ran, Tejana saw scattered clothing, old furniture, abandoned children's toys. The place was eerie, the atmosphere almost haunted, like a ghost town.

Eventually, skidding abruptly around a corner, she reached the service area she was looking for. But to her surprise, she wasn't the only one there. Someone else had arrived before her. A petite woman with short dark hair had opened several of the junction boxes and was busy flipping switches at random.

"Hey!" Tejana yelled. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The woman whirled around and glared at her. At first, Tejana thought she was one of the passengers, nothing but a typically stupid human interfering in something she knew nothing about. But then the woman's lips drew back in a savage grin and the Time Lady saw her razor-sharp teeth.

"Oh, crap!" she breathed, a cold shiver of dread running up her spine as she suddenly understood that the equipment malfunction was no accident. It was deliberate sabotage. "Futurekind!"

"Kind hungry!" the woman hissed. "Humans stay. Humans _food_!"

With that, she picked up an iron anvil that had been left sitting on a nearby maintenance table. Recognising her intention, Tejana screamed and threw herself forward, but she was too late. The woman had already hurled the heavy weight with all her strength into the closest junction box. A terrible crash resounded up the corridor, accompanied by an explosion of bright white electrical sparks like a fountain of tiny, fizzing stars.

Tejana's body struck the Futurekind woman hard, sending them both flying. Locked in a deadly embrace, they rolled across the floor, fighting like a pair of wild animals.

* * *

Back in the Professor's laboratory, things were going from bad to worse. The Doctor had tried every cunning trick he could think of. All the equipment was pushed to its absolute limit but still the radiation inside the coupling chamber was rising to critical levels.

_Come on, Tejana, _he thought grimly. _Come on!_

On the communications screen, he could see the man in the hazmat suit still bravely struggling to release the third cylinder. He was sweating profusely, great rivulets of perspiration streaming down his face behind the transparent mask. The atmosphere inside the chamber was now visibly steamy, a glowing, oily red tinged with malevolent yellow.

"Atillo, get him out of there!" the Doctor yelled into the microphone. "NOW!"

* * *

Tejana twisted and wriggled like an eel, trying to throw the other woman off her. The Futurekind was a lot stronger than she looked and she was determined to rip Tejana's throat out.

"Kind kill you!" she snarled, saliva running down her chin as she stared down at the Time Lady pinned beneath her. "Kind _eat_ you!"

But Tejana was a veteran of the Time War. After surviving the Daleks, she had no intention of ending up as a snack for some rabid cannibal at the end of the Universe.

"Yeah?" she growled, forcibly dragging her wrist free. "Eat _this_!"

With that, she punched the woman as hard as she could in the face, the delicate cartilage of the Futurekind's nose crunching audibly under her fist. The woman howled in agony and fell back, scarlet blood flooding from her ruined nose. With a savage kick to the creature's stomach, Tejana managed to fight her way free. Staggering, she climbed to her feet, looking fruitlessly for something she could use as a weapon. The junction box had completely shorted out by now and flames were licking out of it, bathing the dim corridor in flickering orange light.

_Come on, Tejana, _the Doctor's voice urged across the psychic link, momentarily distracting her. _Come on!_

Before she could reply, the cannibal woman lunged at her again, slamming her violently into the wall and winding her. Razor-sharp teeth tore into her shoulder like knives, shredding her clothes and ripping at her flesh. She shrieked, the excruciating pain making her light-headed, warm wetness dripping from the deep lacerations in her skin.

* * *

In utter desperation, Jack seized two power cables protruding from the control console and dragged them out of their sockets. "We can jump start the override!" he yelled.

"Don't!" the Doctor warned, starting forward. "It's going to flare!"

But Jack had already jammed the live ends of the cables together. While the others watched in horror, his body shuddered and jerked, electricity coursing right through him, frying every one of his synapses. He screamed and collapsed twitching on to the ground, the cables falling from his lifeless hands.

In the background, Atillo's voice could be heard across the communicator: "Jate, get out of there! _Get out!_"

Unfortunately, Jate could no longer hear him. Inside the hazmat suit, his eyes rolled back in his skull. The radiation levels were well beyond critical now, seeping through the protective layers of the suit and melting the flesh from his bones.

"Jate, no!" Atillo roared, as his friend's body disintegrated into dust before his eyes, the orange hazmat suit falling empty to the floor. "Noooooo!"

* * *

The wound was a bad one. Tejana could feel all her energy draining away, lost in the burning well of agony that was her shoulder. She could smell the rancid, unwashed scent of the Futurekind woman pressed so closely against her. The creature's eyes burned with uncontrollable need at the scent of Tejana's blood, her fangs dripping scarlet.

"Feast!" she snarled. "_Feast!_"

With that, she lowered her mouth to Tejana's wound and began ravenously lapping and sucking at the welling blood. Tejana had never felt anything so disgusting and stomach-turning in her entire life. Cold, killing rage exploded inside her. This was now a fight to the death and they both knew it. Summoning all her remaining willpower, she pushed off the wall and charged forward, propelling the cannibal backwards until she struck the opposite wall with a bone-rattling crunch. The Futurekind grunted and collapsed to the floor.

Knowing she had gained only a temporary respite, Tejana turned and stumbled back up the corridor, blood scattering in thick drops on the floor behind her. The Futurekind had almost preternatural strength. Wounded like this, she had no hope of beating the woman at one-on-one combat. Her only chance lay elsewhere, if she could just make it that far.

Finally, turning another corner, she saw what she was looking for – the bulkhead door she and the Doctor and Jack had found and opened earlier. Dragging herself across to the keypad, she typed in the code to release the deadlock. To her satisfaction, she heard the hydraulic hiss of the clamps releasing.

At that moment, the Futurekind woman lurched around the corner, following the trail of blood like a wolf hunting down its prey. Seeing Tejana leaning against the wall, breathing heavily and clutching at her injured shoulder, she bared her teeth in a chilling smile of anticipation.

"Kind kill you _now_!" she rasped, her hands curling into the twisted claws of a predator.

Tejana gave a taunting laugh. "You think? You don't look so good," she sneered. "Time Lord blood too rich for you? Come on, then. What are you waiting for? Come and get me!"

Driven mad by fury and bloodlust, the Futurekind surged forward, desiring nothing more than to tear Tejana to pieces with her bare hands. Tejana stood her ground until the last second. Then, using the last of her strength, she leapt aside, dragging the bulkhead door open as she went. The Futurekind woman gasped, a look of sheer terror crossing her face as she tried to stop. But her forward momentum was far too great and, with a tortured scream, she fell out into the vast emptiness of the rocket chamber, arms and legs flailing wildly as she dropped like a stone.

Tejana shuddered and leaned back against the wall, her eyes closed, panting in relief.

"Hasta la vista, baby!" she said hoarsely.


	9. Chapter 9

_**Author's Note: **_

_**Hi there, I am back to this story, after a little time away! Thanks to the following folk for their reviews - MayFairy, MountainLord-92, sailormajinmoon, silentnightDW, SawManiac211, TheWickedHeart, Celestial Valkyrie, EDZEL2, Son of Whitebeard, Theta'sWorstNightmare, Storme22, and Dragoneisha. **_

_**Special thanks to Storme22 and Dragoneisha for their recent comments, which have reminded me that it's past time I did an update on this one :)**_

* * *

**- Chapter Nine -**

Jack lay on his back, his face vacant and empty, his hands blackened and horribly burnt from the terrific jolt of electricity that had passed through his body. The live cables twitched and spat on the ground beside him, coiling like venomous snakes.

"I've got him," Martha cried impetuously, rushing to kneel at his side again, just as she had done when they had first discovered him out in the wasteland, sprawled beside the TARDIS. She still didn't get it, the Doctor thought wryly. She still didn't understand that all her medical skill was completely wasted on Jack. Already, under the soot and grime that coated his hands, the Doctor could see his friend's external wounds were healing. No doubt the internal ones were repairing themselves just as rapidly.

Chantho grabbed the cables and pulled them aside, safely out of Martha's way. "Chan – don't touch the cables – tho."

Martha tilted Jack's head back and cleared his airway, ready to start emergency CPR procedures. Professor Yana bent over the fallen man, his face lined with weariness and grief. "Oh, I'm _so_ sorry."

Standing in the background, his hands in his pockets, the Doctor calmly watched Martha try to push air into Jack's lungs by exhaling deeply into his mouth. Then she began regular chest compressions, fighting to get his heart beating again. "Come on," she muttered. "Come on, Jack!"

"The chamber is flooded with radiation, yes?" the Doctor asked.

Yana nodded in despair. "Without the couplings, the engines will never start. It was all for _nothing!_"

"Oh, I don't know," the Doctor replied, a slight smile in his eyes as they drifted over Jack's unresponsive face. Then, as Martha frantically attempted more mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he stepped forward and took her by the shoulders, gently pulling her away from Jack's prone figure. "Martha, leave him."

Tears streaking down her face, she struggled against his hold, refusing to give up, refusing to admit Jack was dead. "You've got to let me_ try!_"

But the Doctor simply tightened his grip. "Come on, come on, now just listen to me!" he said, his voice soothing but firm at the same time. "Just leave him alone."

Her eyes were still fixed on Jack, as if she couldn't bear to tear them away. But at last, reluctantly, she obeyed, and stood back. The Doctor's attention returned to Yana. "It strikes me, Professor, that you've got a room no man can enter without dying, is that correct?"

"Yes!" Yana agreed, as if this was stating the obvious.

The Doctor slipped off his black-framed glasses. "Well..."

Suddenly, from the floor, there came a huge, choking gasp for air as Jack hurtled back to life. Yana's jaw dropped in astonishment, while Martha's eyes bulged in shock and nearly fell out of her head.

"I think I've got just the man."

Breathlessly, Jack sat up and eyed them with his usual sang-froid. "Was someone just kissing me?"

* * *

Gritting her teeth against the pain of her shoulder injury, Tejana ran back to the service area, grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and managed to put out the flames still roaring in the corridor. To her dismay, the damage to all three junction boxes was extensive and largely irreparable, even with a sonic screwdriver. Everything was melted and burnt black and dripping with extinguisher foam, the air acrid and foul-smelling with lingering smoke. Despite her outwardly primitive appearance, the Futurekind woman had obviously known exactly what systems to target to do the most harm.

Cursing under her breath, Tejana threw aside the empty extinguisher in disgust, before managing to locate a nearby first aid alcove, adjacent to the service area. Tearing open some of the lockers, she pulled out some sterile dressings and improvised a pad to control the bleeding from her shoulder, anchoring it in place with a large, clumsily-applied self-adherent bandage.

While she was doing that, she accessed the psychic link and gave her father a quick, concise summary of what had happened, carefully omitting the part where she had been injured. There was no point in telling him stuff he didn't need to know.

_It's too late to stabilise the radiation levels anyway, the room's already flooded, _the Doctor responded. _But Jack's immortality means that he should be able to go in safely and connect the couplings. We're heading down there now. _

Tejana closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall, anger sparking deep inside her. It was so typical of her father. He ran halfway across the Universe to get away from Jack and his unnatural immortality, but was he above using it to his advantage when it suited him? Oh no, not a scrap, anything to save whatever part of the Universe he was determined to rescue today. And of course, Jack would go along with it, no matter what it cost him, just because the Doctor had asked it of him. Men, who could understand them, honestly?

_Fine, _she replied curtly. _I'll do my best to repair whatever I can here, to make sure the power levels don't drop again._

_With all that radiation saturating the area under the rocket, I'll probably be out of contact for a bit, _the Doctor warned. _Just...be careful, Tejana, all right?_

_Yeah, you too, Doctor._

The psychic connection between them winked out into silence, and Tejana took a deep, steadying breath, before heading back into the scorched service area, sonic screwdriver at the ready.

* * *

Their long coats flaring out behind them, both the Doctor and Jack ran full tilt through the corridors until they reached the narrow control room that adjoined the radiation chamber. Atillo was still sitting there, slumped in a chair with his head in his hands, trying to come to terms with Jate's fiery death.

"Lieutenant, get on board the rocket!" the Doctor commanded, grasping him by the shoulder. "I promise you, you're going to fly!"

Atillo stared at him blankly. "The chamber's flooded."

"Trust me, we've found a way of tripping the system! Now, _run!_"

Like the good soldier he was, Atillo gave no further argument, but obeyed the order immediately, racing out the door as quickly as he could.

In the background, Jack was stripping off his shirt, revealing the white vest he wore beneath. The Doctor gave him an incredulous look. "What are you taking your clothes off for?"

"I'm going in," Jack replied calmly, pulling his braces back up over his shoulders.

The Doctor glanced back through the observation window in the door, where he could see Jate's orange hazmat suit lying emptily on the ground.

"Well, by the looks of it, I'd say the stet radiation doesn't affect clothing, only flesh."

Jack grinned and flexed his impressive chest muscles. "I look good though!"

Before the Doctor had a chance to say anything else, he strode across to the sliding steel door and took hold of the handle. Then, for just a few seconds, he hesitated and looked over his shoulder at the waiting Time Lord. "How long have you known?"

The Doctor didn't need to ask what he meant. The appeal in the ocean-blue eyes stabbed through him like a knife. The memory of Tejana's accusing voice trickled painfully through his mind: _Whatever has happened to him, whatever Rose did to him, he's still JACK, our Jack, and that's all that should count!_

Faced with his friend's steady gaze, regret and guilt rose up inside him. He'd never been very good at admitting when he was wrong, but he knew that this time he couldn't lie. He could come up with a thousand reasons, a thousand excuses for what he had done, but the inescapable fact was that his actions had caused terrible harm, both to Jack and to his daughter. And this time, he owed Jack the truth.

"Ever since I ran away from you," he said bluntly.

Jack nodded silently, his expression somehow relieved, as if he was glad the Doctor had finally admitted his desertion out loud. Then he pulled open the door and quickly slipped inside.

"Good luck!" the Doctor called, as the door slammed shut behind him.

* * *

_One...two...three...four..._

_One...two...three...four..._

_One...two...three...four..._

The steady beat drilled inexorably into Professor Yana's head, almost drowning out the sound of Martha's voice beside him, chatting away to Chantho.

Unconsciously, he found himself counting along with the constant rhythm of four, his fingers twitching as though they wanted to start tapping. The drum beat had been there all his life, as long as he could remember, but it had never been so loud before, so intrusive, so painful! It was almost as though the arrival of these new people on Malcaissairo had awakened some sort of sleeping beast inside his head.

The Doctor appeared young, friendly, outgoing and lively. But beneath his genial demeanour, behind the cascade of nonsense that constantly babbled from his mouth, the Professor could sense that there was a lot more hidden there, as if what he was seeing was merely the smallest tip of the iceberg. It wasn't just his undeniable genius that Yana found disturbing. Occasionally, there was something in the Doctor's eyes that seemed much, much older than the rest of his face, an expression which somehow resonated with the Professor, as if it was something he should recognise.

And the girl, Tejana. The Doctor's daughter - or so they claimed – beautiful and poised, with a cool, slightly arrogant manner, and a gaze that constantly followed the Professor, wary and suspicious, as if she expected him to transform into a monster at any moment. A couple of times when she had stood near him, he'd had the strangest urge to reach out and touch her, to run his fingers down the soft skin of her arm, but he couldn't have said why. As if it would help him understand, as if it would make things _clearer_...

He pushed the thought away impatiently. There was no hidden meaning, nothing he needed to understand. He was a stupid old man, that was all there was to it. It was just that he had spent too long with no company other than Chantho. It was a natural male reaction to a pretty young girl, nothing more. Ridiculous, at his age, but probably understandable.

Martha was tapping away at the keyboard in front of her. She, at least, appeared to be reassuringly normal. Extremely attractive, of course, but somehow not as disconcerting and unsettling as Tejana. Just an ordinary human. Like him.

"We lost picture when that thing flared up. Doctor, are you there?"

Static fizzed across the screen. No visual image appeared, but the Doctor' voice came clearly across the communicator. "Receiving, yeah. He's inside."

"And still alive?" Martha queried anxiously.

"Oh, yes." Even without a picture on the screen, Yana could hear the grin in the Doctor's voice.

Unlike Martha, Captain Jack Harkness was evidently far from normal. He had been dead – _had _to have been dead, after the enormous voltage that had shocked through his body. Nobody could have survived that sort of trauma. But he had not only revived, but he had seemed completely unimpaired, as strong and as healthy as ever. And now he had apparently entered the radiation chamber unscathed, a room which had disintegrated another man into his component atoms just a short time before.

"But he should evaporate," he protested aloud. "What sort of man is he?"

Martha shrugged. "I've only just met him. The Doctor and Tejana sort of travel through time and space and pick people up." She smiled at him ruefully. "God, I make us sound like stray dogs. Maybe we are."

_Time travel... time travel...time travel..._ Somewhere in the back of Yana's head, a voice started whispering angrily, as if fighting to be heard, but he couldn't make out what it was saying over the driving beat of the drums.

"They travel in time?" he asked weakly, putting a hand on the back of Martha's chair to steady himself.

"Don't ask me to explain it." Martha quirked her thumb over her shoulder at the tall blue box standing quietly in the corner of the laboratory. "That's a TARDIS, that thing. The sports car of time travel, the Doctor says."

He dragged in a ragged breath, her voice echoing around and around his head, bouncing off the inside of his skull. Slowly, he turned and stared at the blue box. It seemed to loom over him, as if it had reared up in his path, like some sort of signpost he was supposed to read but couldn't.

_That's a TARDIS...a TARDIS...time travel...the Doctor says...the Doctor says...a TARDIS..._

* * *

The Doctor looked in at Jack through the inspection window of the door. He was gingerly making his way across the room to the place where Jate had stood previously, in front of the row of coupling cylinders, doing his best not to touch any of the overheated metal surfaces. Perspiration was already breaking out on his brow and sheening his bare, muscular arms. The Doctor couldn't help thinking with some amusement that he looked like a magazine advertisement for male cologne.

"When did_ you _first realise?" he found himself asking.

The question took him by surprise. This was never a conversation he had intended having with Jack. But somehow how it seemed easier, with this door safely between them, with Jack absorbed in a task that would have been a suicide mission for any other man. Easier than talking face to face, anyway.

"Earth, 1892," Jack grunted, lifting the coupling Jate had been working on when he died. "Got in a fight in Ellis Island. A man shot me through the heart. Then I woke up. Thought it was kind of strange. But then it never stopped. Fell off a cliff, trampled by horses, World War One, World War Two, poison, starvation, a stray javelin."

The Doctor couldn't help wincing at that last one, which sounded especially painful. "Oooh."

Jack caught his expression through the window and grinned. Then the smile slipped away and his face became uncharacteristically serious again. "In the end, I got the message. I'm the man who can never die. And all that time you knew."

"That's why I left you behind," the Doctor said, rubbing his hand distractedly across the back of his neck. "It's not easy just looking at you, Jack. Because you're..._wrong_."

Struggling to lift the heavy coupling, Jack gave a tight grimace. "Thanks."

"You are. I can't help it. I'm a Time Lord. It's instinct. It's in my guts. You're a fixed point in time and space. You're a fact. That's never meant to happen. Even the TARDIS reacted against you, tried to shake you off. Flew all the way to the end of the universe just to get rid of you."

The coupling released and clanged noisily into place.

"And Tejana?" Jack asked. "What about her?"

The Doctor sighed. "She was telling the truth, Jack. She never knew about any of it. I told her you were dead. I wanted to protect her from what you'd become. She's far too stubborn for her own good. I wouldn't have been able to stop her going back for you. She's been through too much already. I didn't want her anywhere near you."

"So you made the choice for her. You lied to her. Your own daughter."

The Doctor's jaw tightened defensively at the implied criticism. "I did what I had to do. I'd probably do the same again."

Breathing heavily, Jack lifted the next coupling, ready to slot it into place. "Because you're...prejudiced?" he gasped.

"I never thought of it like that," the Doctor admitted.

Jack's mouth twisted ironically. "Shame on you!"

* * *

Back in the laboratory, still staring steadily at the TARDIS, Professor Yana could hear the entire conversation between the two men.

"Last thing I remember, back when I was mortal," Jack's voice came clearly over the communicator. "I was facing three Daleks. Death by extermination. And then I came back to life."

_Daleks. _Yana had never heard the word before, he was sure, but it wriggled in his mind like a worm boring its way through the soft flesh of a ripe apple. _Daleks. Extermination. Daleks. Extermination..._

"What happened?" Jack continued.

"Rose," replied the Doctor in a pensive voice.

Out of the corner of his vision, Yana saw Martha flinch, as if the name had hit her like a slap.

"I thought you'd sent her back home," Jack asked.

"She came back. Opened the heart of the TARDIS and absorbed the Time Vortex itself."

Tears welled in Yana's eyes and trickled down his wrinkled old cheeks as the words flowed around him like a river._ He didn't even know what a Time Vortex was. None of these names meant anything to him. So why was he crying? Why did he feel such an overwhelming sense of sadness, as if he had lost something, an essential part of himself, long ago? _

Jack's answering voice sounded strained and guttural, as if he was striving to shift another one of the cylinders. "What does that mean...exactly?"

"No-one's ever meant to have that power. If a Time Lord did that, he'd become a god. A vengeful god. But she was human. Everything she did was so human. She brought you back to life, but she couldn't control it. She brought you back forever. That's something I suppose. The final act of the Time War was life."

Yana closed his eyes. _The Time War. _In the back of his mind, he saw an enormous black cross-shaped ship sliding through space like a sleek, armoured predator. And saucers, thousands upon thousands of bronze-coloured saucers, a wall of living metal, deadly and malevolent. The images were strange to him, but unbearably familiar too.

"Do you think she could change me back?" Jack was asking.

"I took the power out of her," the Doctor replied heavily, sorrow and aching loss reverberating in his voice. "She's gone, Jack. She's not just living on a parallel world, she's trapped there. The walls have closed."

"Tejana told me," Jack said. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah." The one word acknowledgement was stiff with pain.

"I went back to her estate, in the nineties, just once or twice. Watched her growing up. Never said hello. Timelines and all that."

Jack's voice trailed away over the communicator into a strident grunt. Evidently, from the sound of it, the coupling he was working on was proving to be somewhat stubborn.

"Do you want to die?" the Doctor asked.

There was a deep pause. And then Jack said, "This one's...a little...stuck."

"Jack?"

"I thought I did. I don't know. But this lot. You see them out here, surviving, and that's fantastic."

"You might be out there somewhere."

Jack laughed. "I could go and meet myself," he joked.

"Well, the only man you're ever going to be happy with," the Doctor responded flippantly.

"This new regeneration," Jack mused. "It's kind of...cheeky."

"I have a daughter to think about," the Doctor replied, and now his voice was completely serious, underlaid with meaning, all hint of teasing gone.

There was another pause, as if Jack was continuing to work, while considering what he was going to say. Then, at last, his own tone deliberately even, he asked, "Are you warning me to stay away from Tejana, Doc?"

"I'm telling you that if you hurt her, I'll make you very sorry," the Doctor said flatly, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind that he meant exactly what he said. "So be careful, Jack. Be very, very careful."


End file.
